Latin America Digest: Today's one-line news briefs

Salvador, Brazil — Brazil’s President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday joined visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in calling on Israel to stop building new settlements in areas claimed by Palestinians.

Bogota, Colombia — Six people, including two children, were killed when suspected Colombian FARC guerrillas stopped and set fire to a bus traveling in the south of the country, a state governor said.

Guatemala City — Guatemalan officials announced the resumption of international adoptions after a nearly two-year suspension prompted by the discovery that some babies were being sold.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras — A Honduran television station that backs deposed President Manuel Zelaya accused the de facto government of interfering with its broadcast signal, replacing news programs with cowboy movies.

Mexico City — Rising oil prices and increased exports are slowly dragging Mexico’s economy out of a severe recession, but the nation’s financial system still faces fundamental challenges, national leaders and experts said.

-- Times wire reports

Former guerrilla Cesare Battisti on hunger strike in Brazil

Former leftist guerrilla Cesare Battisti may be ready to die of hunger in a Brazilian prison rather than face multiple murder charges in Italy, his home country.

Battisti, who is wanted in Italy on four murder charges, reportedly went on a hunger strike and gave Brazilian Sen. Jose Nery a letter addressed to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva saying he favors death in Brazil.

“I am ready to die if I have to but never at the hands of my executioners,” Battisti's letter said, according to Reuters.

The 54-year-old Battisti denies responsibility for the deaths, which occurred in the 1970s when he belonged to a group called Armed Proletarians for Communism.

Battisti's judicial fate is in the hands of Brazil's Supreme Court, which is expected to make a decision on whether to extradite him.

Earlier this year Lula granted Battisti political refugee status, but Italy considers him a terrorist. He escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 and lived in France for years, then fled when his extradition was approved in 2006, Reuters reported. He was on the run when he was arrested in Brazil.

-- Efrain Hernandez Jr.

Mexican image of Brazil wins World Press Photo prize

Mexican photographer Carlos Cazalis was one of the winners in this year's World Press Photo contest. The photographer was given first prize in the Contemporary Issues section for this image he took in São Paulo, Brazil, last year.

Brazilian singer Ceu continues to experiment with diverse genres

On her sophomore project, "Vagarosa," Brazilian singer-songwriter Céu continues to embrace music from far and wide, reports Reed Johnson:

If you've set foot in a Starbucks lately, chances are you've caught a few bars of Céu's music. The Brazilian singer-songwriter's self-titled debut album was picked by the coffee chain to be the first release from an international artist featured in its Hear Music Debut CD series.

Critics showered praise, the disc rose to the top of Billboard's world music chart and Céu (pronounced say-u) scored a Latin Grammy nomination for best new artist of 2006 and a Grammy nomination for best contemporary world music album of 2007.

Céu's creamy vocals and camera-friendly looks helped make her the rare foreign chanteuse who can break through the English-language barrier that often blocks world music artists from the U.S. market (she sings almost exclusively in Portuguese). With her much-anticipated follow-up, "Vagarosa," to promote, she's back on tour and has a return engagement Friday at the Roxy.

Read the rest of this report here on the LATimes Pop & Hiss music blog.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Henry Ford's utopian adventure in the Brazilian rain forest

Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed a marginal event -- Henry Ford's failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural-industrial complex in the heart of Brazil's Amazon Basin -- and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism.

For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of a blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told.

"Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" is precisely that -- a genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist's sense of pace and an eye for character. It's a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.

Read the rest of Tim Rutten's review of Greg Grandin's book Fordlandia.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Journalists protest elimination of degree requirement in Brazil

Journalism students, professionals and union members protested Monday in several parts of Brazil against the Supreme Court's ruling to eliminate the degree requirement for journalists, reports the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog.

Demonstrations occurred in the cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Aracaju, Caxias do Sul, Brasília and Teresina, among others, according to the report. (See a map of the protest sites.)

In Rio, the demonstrators, dressed in black and wearing clown noses, marched to the headquarters of the Brazilian Press Association, O Globo reported.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Brazilian Caetano Veloso takes a tumble

Brazilian singer, songwriter and musician Caetano Veloso wowed his audience at a recent concert in the city of Brasilia, Brazil, but not so much with his tunes. 

Mexico on high alert for Obama; Americas summit awaits

Mexico City is on high alert this morning as it awaits the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama, expected here today in his first official visit to Mexico.

Brazil's 10 best beaches

The Brazilian equivalent of the British expression "Just my cup of tea" is "é minha praia" ('That's my beach"), which tells you all you need to know about the two countries' relative cultural values, writes Gavin McOwan for the Guardian.

The paper asked experts to list their favorite Brazilian beaches and here's what they came up with:

Brazil sets up women's ministry

Talking about the importance of women in the society, Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday: "It's a cynical culture of the world that ignores the contribution of women who stop working to look after children."

The president announced the creation of a Ministry for Women that will be set up to develop specific policies for women and to promote gender equality in Brazil, reports China View.

The new ministry will take on the work of an office in the presidency devoted to the issue and get a bigger budget, Lula said at the opening of a seminar on the role of women in public institutions.

Read the full report on Brazil's women's ministry here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City