Daniel Vorcaro’s web of connections

🎙️ Podcast: Banco Master and the Supreme Court

Just after a historic trial, justices have pulled the court into the swirling scandal involving Banco Master. Now the Chief Justice's push for ethical standards is being put to the test

🕸️ Six Degrees of Banco Master

Since the Banco Master case first broke, we warned that it wouldn’t be long before it reached high-profile politicians. It has now.

✈️ Coming to America

What Lula and Trump discussed on Monday. Alleged conflict of interest in Brazil’s top courts. The Banco Master web extends to former Lula cabinet ministers.

🧾 Tax reform advances

More progress for Brazil’s tax reform. The Mercosur-EU trade deal goes online. Congress to benefit Bolsonaro by cutting his coup sentence.

🎲 Brazil bans prediction markets

Prediction markets have been banned in Brazil. The government is fine-tuning its new debt relief program. How JBS could benefit from a new rule on EU meat quotas.

🚧 Mercosur: 35 and unfinished

Mercosur turns 35. Brazilian beef exporters are racing through their China quota. A virus stolen from a university lab.

😓 Boric’s last headache, Mercosur’s final steps

Chinese undersea cable plans trigger US sanctions on Chile. And Mercosur countries are moving fast to ratify last month’s trade deal with the European Union.

💦 Flying rivers, drying up

Amazon deforestation is linked to falling rainfall in the Iguaçu River basin, the hydrological engine of southern Brazil's economy

💨 Off-season storm

Rare July windstorms killed five people and cut power to half a million properties, days after Brasília unveiled a package built for a slower kind of disaster.

🌡️ The heat tax

A new study puts a number on what three decades of warming cost Brazilian agriculture — and finds the damage concentrated exactly where the country can least absorb it.

⚠️ Not worth a dam

The country's 2026 dam-safety audit shows an expanding inventory, a shrinking inspection workforce and a budget moving the wrong way.

🏊 Rio's Olympic decade

Rio de Janeiro marked 10 years since it hosted the Olympics. This week, we looked at what the Games left behind.

🏎️ Bearing the load

Gabriel Bortoleto has scored 10 of the 12 points Audi has taken in its debut season as a Formula 1 works team.

▶️ YouTube did it

A discount negotiated in 2020 cost Brazil's biggest broadcaster the one thing it can't buy back: habit

🚩 Two clubs, one household

A proposed buyout of Vasco has become the first real test of whether Brazil's new financial-fair-play rules can police family ties, not just balance sheets.

🥃 A spirit without the pride

The number of cachaça producers is at an all-time high, but declared output fell by 16%, and exports remain a rounding error in the global spirits market.

⏪ Remembering the Paraguayan War

A stray line from Lula about the Paraguayan War led Asunción to summon the Brazilian ambassador. The history behind it is less flattering to both countries than either likes to admit.

📋 Looking at the fine print

Mario Esper, Brazil's top standards official and Mercosur's first technical envoy to Europe, on the quiet war over who writes the rules

📚 Money lessons

Personal finance may soon reach every Brazilian classroom — a slow but crucial fix for a country where most adults are already behind on their bills.

🪖 Untouchables no more

Bolsonaro and co-conspirators begin serving their prison sentences as the coup trial ends. The Lula government has fallen out with Congress, again. Projections for Black Friday leave retailers giddy.

🦶 Bolsonaro arrested after violating ankle monitor

Jair Bolsonaro was arrested after trying to remove his ankle monitor. Brazil celebrates more US tariff cuts. Final COP30 decision viewed as a dud.

⌛ Bolsonaro’s final countdown

Bolsonaro submits last appeal before coup conviction becomes final. More questions around a major data center project in Brazil’s Northeast. MBRF’s major halal meat deal.

⚖️ Another coup trial

The next wave of coup trials. Brazil experiences a brief power outage. In Brasília, Lula’s next Supreme Court pick is the hot topic.