Brazil Laws

For insight into why Brazil has fallen far short of becoming a global trading and economic power, look no further than the congested docks at its port of Santos, South America's largest and perhaps most inefficient shipping hub. Until Thursday, when 11,000 union workers finally returned to work, trade had been paralyzed by a 15-day strike at the port 70 miles from Sao Paulo, South America's largest city.

After 26 years of deliberation, Brazil is preparing to throw out a 1916 civil code that allows a man to annul his marriage if he finds that his bride is not a virgin. Congress approved the new code's main articles Wednesday, concluding a tortuous process of disputes and modifications since it was proposed in 1975. But the expected final approval--as early as next week--would not put the code into effect until two years after President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed it.

The Brazilian government scored a crucial legislative victory Wednesday when the lower house of Congress backed a key element of its efforts to streamline the civil service, officials said. Congressional officials said the Chamber of Deputies rejected an opposition amendment that would have restored jobs-for-life guarantees for public servants, a privilege revoked in a civil service reform bill that was approved by the body last week.

About twice a month, gynecologist Maria Picarde says yes, but this time when a young woman in her cramped office made the request, the doctor shook her head no. The woman, 18, wanted to be sterilized. Sterilization is illegal in Brazil, except in life-threatening circumstances; punishment for the offending physician can be up to two years in prison. But like thousands of other doctors in Brazil, Picarde has done hundreds of such procedures in her 17 years of practice.

Reviled as a trademark pirate and bracing for trade sanctions from Washington, Brazil is finally poised to enact a law that would extend patent protection to pharmaceutical products, software and biotechnology. The Brazilian congress is expected to vote Wednesday on legislation for patenting such "intellectual property."

On a quiet Friday afternoon last month, the governor of Paraiba state, Ronaldo Cunha Lima, burst into a fashionable restaurant in this regional capital, pulled a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson from his belt and shot his chief political rival, Tarcisio Burity, in the face. Burity, it seemed, had accused the governor's son of dishonesty. Cunha Lima took exception, and then took aim. Doctors say Burity, who lost three teeth and suffered a perforated tongue, will recover in a month or two.

Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello appealed to world leaders to back a $1.2-billion plan to save the Amazon rain forest, government officials said Thursday. Collor wrote to President Bush and the other six leaders of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations asking them to consider the plan at their July summit in London, the officials said.

Nearly two out of 10 AIDS victims in the state of Rio de Janeiro acquired the virus from contaminated blood received in transfusions, according to health authorities. The alarming rate of AIDS contagion as a result of transfusions is largely the result of official neglect, the authorities acknowledge. And they say that belated measures are being taken to deal with the problem.