"Welcome to Obama-mania, Brazil-style. Few countries have embraced the idea of the US's first black president as enthusiastically as Brazil, a country with one of the largest Afro-descendant populations on Earth yet where black faces remain a minority in politics. Obama T-shirts are everywhere while chat shows and newspaper columns are filled with talk of the 47-year-old Illinois senator. Now even Brazil's politicians are lining up for their piece of the pie. Due to a quirk of Brazilian law, candidates are allowed to run under the name of their choice. As a result, at least six Brazilian politicians have officially renamed themselves 'Barack Obama' in a bid to get an edge over their rivals in October's municipal elections."

"Behind the gloss, there's another side of Brazil. Increased consumer demand and higher food prices are boosting inflation, crime is rampant, deforestation is accelerating and something many people don't like to talk about — racism — is pervasive. … 'We have the strongest apartheid ever because people deny racism exists," says Humberto Adami, head of the nonprofit Institute for Racial and Environmental Laws in Rio de Janeiro. 'It's very hard to combat what is taken as nonexistent.' … Black women are particularly disadvantaged. According to a study by IPEA and the United Nations Development Fund for Women using 2003 data, black women earned 70 percent less than white men, 35 percent less than black men and almost 18 percent less, on average, than white women. Few blacks make it into management. They account for an estimated 3.5 percent of the executives, 17 percent of the managers and 17.4 percent of the supervisors at 500 major companies …"

BRAZILIANS SEE THEMSELVES IN BARACK "Barack Obama's campaign for the U.S. presidency has generated huge interest in Brazil, a country whose African heritage is a key part of its identity but where many blacks still struggle to progress in society. … Obama's progress has been avidly debated in Brazil, from student refectories to newspaper columns. His portrait was on the front cover of this week's Veja magazine, a leading Brazilian news weekly, along with a 10-page report. 'Obama looks like my father,' singer Caetano Veloso said in an interview with Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. 'He's a mulatto that's looks like someone from Santo Amaro (Veloso's hometown). I've heard he's said he looks like a Brazilian.'"

JUST LIKE HERE AT HOME! It's Sao Paolo fashion week, ya'll, and the Brazilian fashion industry is being plagued with rumors that non-white models aren't being properly represented on the catwalk. That's just preposterous! The coordinator of the city's fashion week says that it's not the designers' fault that there were fewer minority models available. Ah, yes. It's an age-old problem.