Summary

Epidemic – According to the Ministry of Health, by early April this year, 450,000 dengue cases had been reported in the country. As it is known that for every case notified approximately ten are not, some five million Brazilians were contaminated by the disease in these four months alone.

Cities – Guarulhos, a municipality in the São Paulo metropolitan region, is in an accelerated process of modernization. Benefitting from its excellent location, next to important highways, and from the fact that it is home to the country’s busiest airport, the city is gradually becoming one of Brazil’s main industrial and logistics clusters.

Communications – In May this year the government launched the National Broadband Plan, with which it intends to take high speed Internet access to at least 40 million homes by 2014. The initiative, however, is being held back by the interests of powerful telecommunications companies.

Education – In Brazil, children with above-average intelligence, who often face difficulties at school for not being able to meet the behavioral standards required, do not receive the attention necessary to develop their full potential.

Behavior – A phenomenon that has become a challenge for the modern world’s public health, judicial and educational systems, bullying often takes place without drawing much attention. Its effects, however, can be devastating and even lead to suicide.

Security – Official data indicate that criminals are migrating from the big metropolises. Robberies, murders, car thefts, burglaries etc. are now common in smaller cities too. Deficient law enforcement agencies are among the reasons for the change.

Technology – Upon completing 25 years of existence, the Ministry of Science and Technology’s bottom line is positive, despite its initial ups and downs. Presently, distinguished members of the scientific community find the portfolio’s work indispensable.

Housing – A government program that facilitates the acquisition of houses by families with up to ten minimum wages is driving a booming real estate market in Brazil. Urban planners, however, are critical of the government’s strategy because the expansion is concentrated on city fringes.

Tourism – The community of Barbados, situated within the Superagui National Park, on the coast of Paraná State, is facing hardships to survive due to environmental restrictions. Surrounded by natural beauty, local residents look to community tourism as their only source of income generation.

Environment – The estuary of the Sirinhaém River, on the southern coast of Pernambuco State, is the stage of a legal dispute between families that subsist on gathering and a sugar cane mill seeking to expel them. Social and environmental organizations are struggling for the area to be declared an ‘extractive reservation’, as that would be the ideal solution for the riparian families.

Medicine – According to the World Health Organization, 1 in every 10 patients admitted to a hospital, worldwide, is a victim of medical error. In Brazil, the number of related cases judged by the Higher Tribunal of Justice grew by 200% between 2002 and 2008.

Health – In Brazil, burns are the second major cause of hospital admissions, by accidents, for children aged 0–4 years and the fourth for children aged 9 years or under. In the world some 320,000 deaths a year are caused by burns, 95% of which occur in developing countries.

Brazilian pop music – One hundred years ago today was born in Rio de Janeiro one of the most celebrated Brazilian popular music composers: Noel Rosa. After a short but intense life, Noel Rosa died at the age of 26 from tuberculosis.

Memory – The year of 2010 marks the death centennial of Angelo Agostini, an Italian who arrived in Brazil at the age of seventeen to make history. An artist with multiple talents, he played an important role in the Brazilian abolitionist movement.

Thematic panels – Marisa Amato, a cardiology doctor, gave a talk at the Economics, Sociology and Politics Council of the São Paulo State Fecomercio, Sesc and Senac on the limits of medicine, whose current focus, in her opinion, is to invest in health as much as possible to ensure quality of life in the future.
At the same council, economist Josué Mussalém spoke on the environment from the perspective of geopolitics.