Archive
Reuters blog archive
from Photographers Blog:
The Pope is pop
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
By Sergio Moraes
When we recently received the official agenda for Pope Francis’ July trip to Rio de Janeiro, we went straight out to photograph the sites he will visit. Brazil has 123 million Roman Catholics according to the last census, more than any other country. Since Rio is the world’s most irreverent city, according to its own residents, all Popes are received here with the slogan, “The Pope is pop.”
And with the large number of events in which he’ll participate here, that slogan will be on everyone’s minds.
Cariocas, as we natives of Rio are called, have a joke for everything, including for all the delays that we see happening in the construction of stadiums for next year’s World Cup. Our slogan of the moment is “Imagine that during the Cup”, and we use it for everything. If we run into a traffic jam, someone will inevitably say, “Imagine that during the Cup.” If a beer is too warm, if a restaurant's service is slow, or if a day is rainy, we blurt out, “Imagine that during the Cup.”
I think the high point of the Pope’s visit will be the two days visiting Copacabana Beach, a place that every year sees two million revelers celebrating New Year.
from David Rohde:
Prosperity without power
A woman walking near the headquarters (L) of the Federal Security Service, in central Moscow, May 14, 2013. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
In Moscow, they are “non-Soviet Russians.” In New Delhi, they are a “political Goliath” that may soon awake. In Beijing and São Paolo, they are lawyers and other professionals who complain about glacial government bureaucracies and endemic graft.
from Full Focus:
Message of humility
A religious fraternity in Rio considers the election of Pope Francis, the first pontiff to take the name of St Francis of Assisi, a confirmation of their beliefs in poverty and simplicity.
from Photographers Blog:
In the spirit of a Franciscan Pope
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
By Ricardo Moraes
It was Palm Sunday in Rio’s cathedral when I found them in a small group wearing their simple, traditional robes, with short hair and beards, praying, concentrating, amidst hundreds of other Catholics. I’m talking about the Franciscans, young followers of Saint Francis of Assisi who on some occasions I had seen roaming the city, almost invisible, helping Rio’s poor.
I knew nothing about them, but with the election of a Latin American Pope and his chosen name of Francis, I began to do some research. Apart from what I learned from the Internet and through phone calls to a monastery, there wasn’t a lot more information available. The Franciscan orders have existed for centuries around the world, but I wanted to know more about those youths who one monk had told me are the “Church’s rebels.”
from Global Investing:
It’s all adding up – emerging markets to drive global spending
The world's leading ad agencies are positioning themselves in Brazil, Russia and China -- countries that are expected to provide almost a third of the growth in global advertising over the next three years. That's according to a report by S&P Capital IQ Equity Research, a unit of publishing giant McGraw Hill.
Most major advertisers already have a foothold in these BRIC economies, where the advertising market is projected to grow by an average 10.7 percent a year over the next three years -- more than three times the growth rate in the developed world. Over the next 15 years, big emerging markets will add $200 billion to the global ad spend, S&P Capital IQ reckons.
from Photographers Blog:
A world without smiles
By Lunaé Parracho
The northeastern city of Salvador, Brazil’s third-largest, is a major tourist destination thanks to its beautiful beaches and popular festivals. Its Carnival is considered the world’s largest street party.
In spite of being idyllic in so many ways, this city suffers from an unprecedented explosion of violence in recent years, part of a national phenomenon with the migration of violence towards the north. While the murder rate has dropped more than 63% in the southeast in the past ten years, it has increased 86% in the northeast. That is according to the 2012 Map of Violence compiled by the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies.
from Full Focus:
Favelas in arms
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Photographer Lunae Parracho traveled to Salvador, one of Brazil's main tourist destinations and a 2014 World Cup host city, that has suffered from an unprecedented wave of violence with an increase of over 250% in the murder rate, according to the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies (CEBELA).Lunae documented a police patrol through the slums and high-tec police training, made portraits of drug gang members posing with their weapons, covered the homicide squad and photographed victims of gun violence. Read Lunae's personal account here.
from Global Investing:
Deutsche’s emerging markets bear sticking to his guns
Emerging markets bear John-Paul Smith first made his call to underweight emerging equities at the end of 2010. In a note released late on Monday he points out that such a position would have paid off handsomely -- since end-2010 emerging equities have underperformed MSCI's World index by 27.5 percent and U.S. MSCI by 37.6 percent.
Smith, who is head of emerging equity strategy at Deutsche Bank, sees no reason to change his call. Reckoning that the cyclical heyday of emerging markets is past, he is advising clients to hold on to developed and U.S. equities at the expense of emerging markets. The reason? China, pivotal for the rest of the EM world for commodities, trade.
from Global Investing:
Show us the (Japanese) money
Where is the Japanese money? Mostly it has been heading back to home shores as we wrote here yesterday.
The assumption was that the Bank of Japan's huge money-printing campaign would push Japanese retail and institutional investors out in search of yield. Emerging markets were expected to capture at least part of a potentially huge outflow from Japan and also benefit from rising allocations from other international funds as a result. But almost a month after the BOJ announced its plans, the cash has not yet arrived.
from Global Investing:
BRIC banks reap ratings reward from government support
The ability of Brazil, Russia, India and China to support their leading banks is tightly correlated to the credit rating on the banks, according to ratings agency Moody's. The agency compares the ratings of four of the biggest BRIC banks which it says are likely to enjoy sovereign support if they run into trouble.
China's Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) tops the list of BRIC lenders with a rating of (A1 stable) thanks to the central bank's $3 trillion plus reserve stash.
