Text 3
Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/12/brazil-etf-emerging-intelligentinvesting-markets.html

Buy Into Brazil
David Serchuk [For bes Magazine]
There's a lot to like about South America's biggest
economy. Hosting the Olympics and World Cup doesn't
hurt either.

Suddenly everyone is talking about Brazil. This makes sense considering that the colossus of South America out-hustled President Obama and his hometown of Chicago to land the 2016 Olympics. It has also benefi ted by being the "B" part of the BRIC group of emerging nations, in addition to Russia, India and China. It's an emerging power that some investors have just learned about, though the pros have been hip to it for some time.
From 2003 through 2007, Brazil ran record trade surpluses, and its gross domestic product, at $1.99 trillion, is the 10th largest in the world. It has large and well- developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing and service sectors, and its conomy is bigger than all other nations in South America combined. Brazil is expanding its presence in world markets and, as we have seen, the world's playing fi elds.
There are also some signifi cant drawbacks to Brazil. Despite its potent GDP, rampant income inequality means that its per capita wealth is 102nd in the world, slightly behind the global average and noted powerhouse Serbia. Brazil's richest 10% reaps 43% of its wealth; in the U.S. that number is 30%. Brazil's bottom 10% earns a minuscule 1.1%. Still, there is a lot to like here, and our industry observers are ready to buy.

Text 2
Source: The New York Times November 11, 2009 [slightly adapted]

Trucks, Trains and Trees
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
No matter how many times you hear them, there are some statistics that just bowl you over. The one that always stuns me is this: Imagine if you took all the cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships in the world and added up their exhaust every year. The amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, all those cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships collectively emit into the atmosphere is actually less than the carbon emissions every year that result from the chopping down and clearing of tropical forests in places like Brazil, Indonesia and the Congo. We are now losing a tropical forest the size of New York State every year, and the carbon that releases into the atmosphere now accounts for roughly 17 percent of all global emissions contributing to climate change. [.]
"You need a new model of economic development - one that is based on raising people's standards of living by maintaining their natural capital, not just by converting that natural capital to ranching or industrial farming or logging," said José María Silva, a conservation expert. Right now people protecting the rainforest are paid a pittance - compared with those who strip it - even though we now know that the rainforest provides everything from keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere to maintaining the fl ow of freshwater into rivers.
The good news is that Brazil has put in place all the elements of a system to compensate its forest-dwellers for maintaining the forests. Brazil has already set aside 43 percent of the Amazon rainforest for conservation and for indigenous peoples. Another 19 percent of the Amazon, though, has already been deforested by farmers and ranchers.

Old Tray, New Tricks: Windows 7's Taskbar and window
management tweaks are nice. But its changes to the
System Tray - aka the Notification Area - have a huge
positive effect.

Changes in Windows 7 transform the System Tray from
an intrusive eyesore (in Windows Vista) into a useful set of
shortcuts and other controls.
In the past, no feature of Windows packed more
frustration per square inch than the System Tray. It quickly grew
dense with applets that users did not want in the first place, and
many of the uninvited guests employed word balloons and
other intrusive methods to alert users to uninteresting facts at
inopportune moments. At their worst, System Tray applets
behaved like belligerent squatters, and Windows did little to put
users [PARTICLE] in charge.
In Windows 7, applets can't pester you unbidden
because software installers can't dump them into the System
Tray. Instead, applets land in a holding pen that appears only
when you click it, a much-improved version of the overflow area
used in previous incarnations of the Tray. Applets in the pen
can't float word balloons at you unless you permit them to do so.
In Windows 7, applets can't pester you unbidden
because software installers can't dump them into the System
Tray. Instead, applets land in a holding pen that appears only
when you click it, a much-improved version of the overflow area
used in previous incarnations of the Tray. Applets in the pen
can't float word balloons at you unless you permit them to do so.
It's a cinch to drag them into the System Tray or out of it again,
so you enjoy complete control over which applets reside there.
More good news: Windows 7 largely dispenses with the
onslaught of word-balloon warnings from the OS about
troubleshooting issues, potential security problems, and the like.
A new area called Action Center - a revamped version of Vista's
Security Center - queues up such alerts so you can deal with
them at your convenience. Action Center does issue
notifications of its own from the System Tray, but you can shut
these off if you don't want them pestering you.
All of this helps make Windows 7 the least distracting,
least intrusive Microsoft OS in a very long time. It's a giant step
forward from the days when Windows thought nothing of
interrupting your work to inform you that it had detected unused
icons on your desktop.

(Adapted from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/172602/windows_7_review.html)