CHECK OUT THE PLANS FOR RIO FAVELAS TO GET FACELIFT

Check this out.  Rio de Janeiro has some big plans for their favelas...

Plans for Rio Favelas to Get Facelift

By Patricia Maresch, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – It’s one of Rio’s biggest challenges before the start of the World Cup of 2014 and the Olympic Games of 2016: the transformation and urbanization of the city’s favelas (slums) while simultaneously pacifying them with the special UPP police force unit.

Urbanization plan for Penha, photo Divulgação.

The government plans to invest US$600 million remodeling the favelas at the Complexo do Alemão and Complexo da Penha’s Vila Cruzeiro. Last month these two hillsides in Rio’s Zona Norte (North zone) were the scene of some of the worst violent episodes Rio has seen in recent memory.

The army and police now claim to have restored order, and now it’s time for the new phase of remodeling and development. In the wake of the city-wide violence and global media attention, Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes announced the construction of 600 houses, 19 creches, five health clinics, a library, a garden, a cinema and a completely renewed infrastructure for this are of Zona Norte.

It’s all part of a bigger program named PAC 2, Brazil’s Growth Acceleration Program 2. A plan initiated by federal government to build US$800 billion worth of infrastructure between now and 2016 as the second phase of an economic stimulus program whose first phase has yet to be completed.

PAC 2 presentation photo by Ministerio de Educação/Wikimedia Creative Commons License.

Apart from remodeling Alemão and Penha, PAC 2 also entails a six kilometer long monorail linking the heart of Tijuca, the Praça Saens Peña, to the favelas Salgueiro, Formiga and Borel. However, overhauling the favelas won’t be exclusive to Zona Norte, Rio plans to have all, almost 600, inner-city favelas redesigned and improved.

Rio’s largest favela, Rocinha in the Zona Sul (South zone) which already benefited from PAC 1, will get a 2.5 km high cable-car which will eventually hook up the favela with the future metro line Barra – Zona Sul. Other favelas that will benefit from the billion dollar project are Mangueira, Cidade de Deus, Batam, Juramento, Rio das Pedras and Favela Kelsons.

Some community leaders wonder if installing cable cars, monorails and swimming pools will be effective, and critics warn that it could all end up in a superficial makeover. The fear is that all plans will result in failure without major investment in education and job creation for residents of the favelas.

During the presentation of PAC 2 earlier this year, President Lula recognized the bureaucratic shackles that are delaying PAC 1 projects. After more than three years, just a little over 50 percent of the scheduled projects have been completed. Last week however, Lula said 82 percent will be finished by the end of this year.

http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/plans-for-rio-favelas-to-get-facelift/

BRAZIL'S RISING STAR - VIA 60 MINUTES CBS NEWS

Brazil's Rising Star

December 12, 2010 5:20 PM

As the U.S. and most of the world's countries limp along after the crippling recession, Brazil is off and running with jobs, industry, and resources. Steve Kroft reports.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/09/60minutes/main7134185.shtml

ROUSSEFF, BRAZIL'S PRES-ELECT SPEAKS ON CURRENCY WAR / CHINA INVESTS HEAVILY IN BRAZIL

Rousseff speaks on the currency war

November 2, 2010 5:10pm

by Barney Jopson

 

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president-elect, has made her first comments on the “currency war” since winning Sunday’s election. This is the war in which Brazil’s outgoing finance minister told us the world was engaged and Rousseff, broadly speaking, stuck to the policy line he set out.

In separate television interviews, she said that “manipulating” exchange rates cannot resolve anything, that she would not do anything that “created confusion”, and that international organisations such as the G20 should be strong enough to “force certain countries” to value their currencies realistically.

We can only gather from those words that she does not view as problematic the kind of capital controls introduced - and recently tightened - by the government of her mentor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Continuity is the watchword, but her comments leave plenty of questions unanswered. When she makes her international debut at the G20 meeting in Seoul next week, alongside Lula, she will no doubt deal with some of them.

OCT 31, HALLOWEEN: BRAZIL ELECTS DILMA ROUSSEFF AS PRESIDENT

 Some say she is in position to be the most powerful woman in the world...
Sharif Ali

Brazil Elects Dilma Rousseff as President Posted: 31 Oct 2010 05:36 PM PDT By Sibel Tinar, Senior Contributing Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Sunday has been the day of victory for Dilma Rousseff, who is elected Brazil’s next president to succeedLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after beating her rival José Serra by over ten points in the run-off round of the presidential elections. Dilma Rousseff, who is elected Brazil's first female president this Sunday, cast her vote in Porte Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul before flying to Brasília, photo by Wilson Dias/ABr. After failing to secure the absolute majority of the votes in the first round of elections on October 3rd, which sent the race to the second round, Lula’s protégée Dilma has secured 56 percent of the votes as opposed to Serra’s 44 percent, and will be Brazil’s first female president when she takes office on January 1st, 2011. The elections, in which 99.1 million valid ballots were cast, began at 8AM in the morning, and the vote count started after the last ballots closed at 7PM. The Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) has called the

BRAZIL'S FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT

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Dilma Rousseff profile: former guerrilla primed to become Brazil's first female president

Dilma Rousseff is a former Marxist guerrilla who was jailed and tortured during the years of Brazil's military dictatorship.

By Robin Yapp, Sao Paulo
Published: 2:03PM GMT 31 Oct 2010

Dilma Rousseff was little known until President Lula selected her as his flavored successor Photo: EPA

Born in December 1947 in Belo Horizonte, in the coffee-growing state of Minas Gerais, Ms Rousseff had a middle-class upbringing.