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| Dilma Rousseff, 63. Photo courtesy: L'Express.fr |
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People need to be active. A weekend football game must not be the only physical activity for a Brazilian. Adults need to do exercise: walk, dance and have safe sex," said Jose Gomes Temporao.
The minister gave the advice as he launched a campaign to prevent high blood pressure, which afflicts a quarter of Brazil's 190-million strong population.
High blood pressure afflicts a quarter of Brazil's 190-million population Photo: Getty Images
After making his unusual comments, Mr Temporao defended his promotion of sexual intercourse to journalists, according to the G1 news website.
"It's not a joke. It's serious. Having regular physical exercises also means sex, always with protection of course," he said.
"Dancing, having sex, keeping weight under control, changing dietary habits, doing physical exercise" all help keep blood pressure down, he said.
He added that he believed there was a health "time bomb" ticking in Brazil, which within 20 years could see a "gigantic percentage" of the population suffering chronic illnesses, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. [rc]
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010
Caetano Veloso is consistently one of the most literate and beguiling forces in music. To see him in person is to see a sinuous, warm and joyous show in which Veloso's vocals are backed by a young and edgy band.
On his Portuguese-language blog, Veloso wrote that at age 67, he feels at the "infancy of old age."
"I'm beginning to be an old man," Veloso says. "It's something that can excite you, because you get curious to see how changes go. You lose a lot, but you can gain a lot, too."
The title of his latest album, Zii E Zie, is Italian for "uncles and aunts." Veloso had read a Turkish book in Italian that used this phrase, and it reminded him of how Brazilians refer to adults as "uncles and aunts."
Related report
Read review of Zii E Zie on ALL ABOUT JAZZ
The title of Caetano Veloso's new album, Zii E Zie, is Italian for "uncles and aunts." Photo by Fernando Young
The lyrics for the opening track, "Perdeu," were inspired by its staccato guitar beat. The word means "You lost" and it's what the poverty-stricken people of Rio de Janeiro yell before they kill somebody. The song tells the story of a young man born in a favela who died early from one of those confrontations.Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso (born August 7, 1942), better known as Caetano Veloso, is a composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. He has been called "one of the greatest songwriters of the century" and is sometimes considered to be the Bob Dylan of Brazil. - From WikipediaVeloso has never shied away from politics. He says that one of the new songs, "A Base de Guatanamo," is "very simple, but the situation is very complicated." "Knowing about the things that were going on in the Guantanamo prison, I felt uneasy," Veloso says. "The United States is a revolutionary country, and as revolutionary counties go, the United States is the most accomplished. To have the United States... to have them doing the things they were doing in Cuba is symbolically too heavy." Freedom Is Not An Easy Word
When Weekend Edition Sunday guest host Jacki Lyden thinks of Caetano Veloso's world, the word "freedom" immediately comes to mind.
"Freedom is the key word," Veloso says. "It's not an easy word. It's hard to define, and also it's hard to accomplish in real life. But the ideas that arise when we hear the word 'freedom' in any language are the ideas that are concerned with the most important things -- our politics, our daily lives, personal and interpersonal relationships. Everything."
Photo credit: journaloexpresso
Family is also everything to Veloso. In the YouTube video on this page, he plays a song ("Por Quem?") with his mother and his sister, Maria Bethania.
"She's a happy woman and she loves singing," Veloso says of his mother. "I think my love of singing came from her." [rc]
Copyright 2010 NPR
The heat wave besetting most of Brazil with temperatures above 40 C (104 F) has killed 32 elderly people in just two days in the city of Santos, in the southwestern state of Sao Paulo, the municipal Health Secretariat said Wednesday.
A street thermometer puts the temperature at 44 degree Celsius at around 2:00 pm, in downtown Rio de Janeiro on February 8. The worst heatwave to hit Rio de Janeiro in 50 years turned the city into a pre-Carnival furnace Wednesday, and killed 32 elderly people further south, officials said. Courtesy: France 24
The victims, who died on Monday and Tuesday, ranged in age from 65 to 90 and all of them suffered from chronic health problems such as diabetes, hypertension and heart difficulties.
Dehydration caused by the intense heat could have aggravated the victims’ preexisting problems as well, the secretariat said.
Of the 32 people, 17 died at their homes, while the other 15 expired in health centers where they had been admitted.
There were 220 telephone calls for help received by the emergency services during those two days, whereas the daily average is 130, Santos Health Secretary Santos Odilio Rodrigues Filho said.
Because of the high temperatures in recent weeks in several parts of the country during the middle of the austral summer, the Santos mayor’s office has begun an information campaign about the dangers of dehydration.
In Rio de Janeiro, thermometers have hit 42 C (108 F) several times in the first few days of February.
Last week, the Brazilian government reported that – due to the intense heat wave – the consumption of electricity around the country reached historic highs and that demand for it increased during the first month of the year by 12.1 percent compared to January 2009. EFE
Copyright Latin American Herald Tribune - 2009
Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil's most famous and oldest architect, celebrated, his 102nd birthday yesterday, as he has done all his life on such occasion: working on his projects, which are still very much in demand throughout the world.
One of the world's most celebrated architects lives in Ipanema with his wife, 40 years younger than him, and still works every day in his office in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro.
When he arrived to work, yesterday, at about 11 am, he was surrounded in the lobby of the building by journalists who wanted to know how he was doing in his special. The old architect can become grumpy when the subject is his birthday, something he has already called crap, commenting there is nothing fun about being old.
Oscar Niemeyer. Photo credit: escaire.com
After a brief turmoil, Niemeyer regained his good mood and ended up giving a quick interview in his office. "Birthday to me is a day like any other, but I feel like I need to talk to you."
The architect, who was hospitalized in September and underwent two surgeries, talked about how he feel about his old age. "We look back and see so much work. Life is too complicated. I pass through it without any problems, fortunately. The man has to be fraternal. We have to look the other and walk together. I'm like the others. I don't see any special quality in me. I just worked and had some of my ideas well used, "he said.
Niemeyer's family opted for a quiet celebration. By noon, some grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great-granddaughter Camila, age 7, had come to his studio on Avenida Atlântica in front of Copacabana beach, for lunch.
Ana Lúcia, a granddaughter, said it was with great joy that the family was celebrating the birthday. "For us it's been a relief to see him get to this age so well, especially after the scare we had (the September hospitalization). He's acts like a sweetheart with his wife, smokes his cigarillos and takes his wine, without problem," she said. "He is the most important cultural fact that Brazil has had."
Niemeyer, in turn, doesn't seem impressed with his longevity and he is humble when describing his work: "I gave no contribution (to the Brazilian architecture). I just tried to be helpful. I'm no better than anyone. I have no fantasies," he concluded.
Still his work can be found all over the world. In Brazil, he designed São Paulo's Ibirapuera Park for the celebrations of the city's 400th anniversary and the Copan apartment building. In Brazilian capital Brasília, Niemeyer designed a large number of buildings including the Palácio da Alvorada (the president's residence), the National Congress the city's Cathedral. [rc]
Source: Brazzil Magazine
The life expectancy of the Brazilian population increased from 69.66 years in 1998 to 72.86 years in 2008, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and Tuesday's Brazilian Official Gazette.
Men's life expectancy was 69.11 years and women's was 76. 71 years last year. The data indicate a significant progress compared with 45.50 years in 1940.
According to the IBGE, Brazil will need some time to catch up with Japan, Hong Kong (China), Switzerland, Iceland, Australia, France and Italy, where the average life expectancy is already over 81. Research has shown that Brazil would achieve that level by 2040.
Elderly Brazilian football fan Courtesy: PhotographersDirect
The data came from the IBGE's Complete Mortality Tables for Brazil's population, which have been published annually since 1999. They are used by the Ministry of Social Security as one of the parameters for the retirement fund factor under the General System of Social Security. [rc]
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily
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| Paulo Coelho poses during the shooting of a Volkswagen ad at the Strahov monastery library. (ČTK) |
