BRASILIA, Dec 5 (Reuters) – President Dilma Rousseff
announced on Wednesday the extension of a government lending
program to boost purchases of capital goods, telling business
leaders Brazil must increase industrial investment if it is to
restore vigorous economic growth.

The world’s sixth-largest economy grew much less than
expected in the third quarter, despite a barrage of tax breaks
and other stimulus measures taken by Rousseff this year.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s government on Tuesday extended tax breaks to the country’s construction industry in a new effort to encourage investment and boost flagging growth in the world’s sixth-largest economy.

The Brazilian economy grew much less than expected in the third quarter, surprising economists and policymakers alike and putting pressure on the government to widen a barrage of stimulus measures it launched this year.

BRASILIA, Nov 30 (Reuters) – President Dilma Rousseff on
Friday vetoed parts of a controversial royalties bill that pit
Brazil’s oil-producing states against the rest of the country in
a battle over future oil wealth.

Seeking a compromise on perhaps the most divisive issues to
arise during her nearly two-year-old presidency, Rousseff vetoed
clauses that would slash income for Brazil’s main oil states,
including Rio de Janeiro.

BRASILIA, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff is scrambling to contain fallout from a corruption
scandal involving government officials linked to her mentor and
predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that has given her
political opponents fresh ammunition.

The new scandal, which comes two weeks after the conviction
of top Lula aides in Brazil’s biggest-ever political corruption
trial, could delay government decisions over airport upgrades
and other infrastructure projects that are badly needed to make
the world’s sixth-largest economy more efficient.

BRASILIA, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff, moving quickly to nip a new scandal in the bud,
ordered the dismissal on Saturday of government officials
allegedly involved in a bribery ring, including the country’s
deputy attorney general.

Federal police raided government offices in Brasilia and Sao
Paulo on Friday and arrested six people for running an influence
peddling ring that sold government approvals to businessmen in
return for bribes.

BRASILIA, Nov 1 (Reuters) – As the biggest corruption trial
in Brazilian history comes to an end with convictions of
once-powerful politicians, at least one hero has emerged from
the mess — the first black member of the country’s Supreme
Court.

People stop Justice Joaquim Barbosa in the street to thank
him. Revelers in Rio de Janeiro have been buying Barbosa
carnival masks and wearing them in demonstrations. His childhood
picture recently graced the cover of the country’s biggest
newsweekly with the caption “The Poor Boy Who Changed Brazil.”s

BRASILIA, Oct 26 (Reuters) – A massive blackout left as many
as 53 million Brazilians in the dark late Thursday and early
Friday, the latest in a string of energy shortages that have
raised questions about whether Brazil’s infrastructure is
keeping pace with economic growth.

Officials said a fire in a substation in the Amazon knocked
out the whole northeastern electricity grid in the region’s
worst blackout since 2001. The outage, which follows two other
big blackouts in Brazil in as many months, lasted up to four
hours in some places and brought major industries to a halt.

BRASILIA, Oct 18 (Reuters) – Brazil enacted a controversial
law on Thursday meant to protect forests and force farmers to
replant trees on scattered swathes of illegally cleared land
totaling an area roughly the size of Italy.

The law, signed by President Dilma Rousseff, overhauls the
“forest code,” a set of laws unchanged for decades that dictates
the minimum percentage and type of woodland that farmers, timber
companies and others must leave intact on their properties.

BRASILIA, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted
three top aides of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on
Tuesday on charges of diverting public funds to buy political
support for his leftist government when it came to power a
decade ago.

In a landmark ruling, the court found Lula’s former chief of
staff Jose Dirceu, co-founder of the ruling Workers’ Party,
guilty of running a scheme of monthly payments to politicians in
exchange for their votes in Congress.

BRASILIA, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Until a few weeks ago, Brazil’s
most popular politician and two-time president, Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, could seemingly do no wrong.

Yet a corruption trial involving many of his closest former
aides, plus new evidence that he was not the economic wizard
some took him for, has tarnished Lula’s reputation – and cooled
speculation that he might try to return as president in 2014.