Porto Alegre Brazil

This is Brazil's most European city, far removed from the beaches and social despair of Rio de Janeiro to the north. Parisian fashions are often seen on the streets here, a season before New York, and democratic thinking is far ahead of its time. Its many galleries and museums display cutting-edge contemporary works and artifacts of Rio Grande do Sul's long artistic history.

This is Brazil's most European city, far removed from the beaches and social despair of Rio de Janeiro to the north. Parisian fashions are often seen on the streets here, a season before New York, and democratic thinking is far ahead of its time. Its many galleries and museums display cutting-edge contemporary works and artifacts of Rio Grande do Sul's long artistic history.

President Bush said Thursday that he will nominate Roger A. McGuire, a career diplomat, as ambassador to Guinea-Bissau. McGuire, 48, is a consular officer in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is a former charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Namibia and has served as a political officer in Zambia.

Child prostitutes can be found in cities across the globe, some bewildered by what has happened to them, others hardened by life in the streets. They are the victims of broken families, social injustice and criminal exploitation. The stories of three: Porto Alegre, Brazil At 11 V.B.A. felt she had run out of options. For two years, her drug-addicted stepfather had raped her regularly, although her mother refused to believe it. So V.B.A.

The State Department is closing two embassies and 11 consulates as part of budget cuts approved by Congress in July. One of them, the U.S. consulate in Bordeaux in southwest France, was the oldest U.S. diplomatic office in the world. All will be closed by Sept. 30, end of the fiscal year. In some areas, the State Department is replacing the consulates with a one-person consular agency staffed by an American citizen who can help out in emergencies, a spokesman said.

Today capitalists in New York City and anarchists, socialists and radicals of every stripe in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will take on the same big issue: how to convince rich nations to invest in the well- being of poor people in poor countries. There is precious little common ground between the powerful men and women attending the World Economic Forum and the angry outsiders convening for Porto Alegre's World Social Forum.

The Copa Libertadores, South America's equivalent of the European Champions League, has gotten off to a less-than-spectacular start for the two Mexican teams that qualified for the 32-team tournament. Coach Hugo Sanchez's UNAM team gave up a last-minute goal and lost, 3-2, to Gremio in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on Tuesday night, and Coach Mario Carrillo's Cruz Azul was beaten, 1-0, by Corinthians in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Wednesday night.

Mexico scraped through to the final round of World Cup qualifying on Wednesday night despite a 1-0 loss in Honduras that is certain to put Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson under even closer scrutiny. "El Tri" managed to make it through because it held the score down in rain-drenched San Pedro Sula and because Jamaica could not conjure up enough goals in Kingston, where it defeated Canada, 3-0. Had Honduras and Jamaica won by a large enough combined margin, Mexico would have been eliminated.

France signed multibillion-dollar arms deals Tuesday to sell Brazil 50 military helicopters and five submarines, including one nuclear-powered vessel. French President Nicolas Sarkozy joined his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, at a news conference at a hotel fronting Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach to announce the deals, whose value could exceed $11 billion.

Hundreds of thousands of activists from across Europe marched peacefully through Florence, Italy, on Saturday in a long-planned anti-globalization protest that became a festive rally against a possible U.S.-led war on Iraq. Headed by a banner proclaiming "No War," the march came a day after the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to give Iraq "a final opportunity" to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction or face "serious consequences." Police estimated the crowd at 450,000.

Finding the discount on a new Renault hatchback irresistible, lawyer Roni Figueiro of Porto Alegre, Brazil, took the plunge, plunking down $22,200 last week for the first new car he has ever owned. Prodded by government incentives, consumers like Figueiro are not just keeping the Brazilian economy afloat amid the global crisis but propelling it toward a robust recovery next year, according to a survey of Brazilian economists made public by the central bank last week. The expected recovery is another example of how things seem to be breaking Brazil's way. Today, the nation will find out whether Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Summer Olympics.