A 20-year-old tourism student has been expelled from a Sao Paulo university after chaos broke out on campus when she turned up in a short dress. Read more...

A 42-year-old was beaten up and shot by two robbers last Sunday in downtown Rio de Janeiro. CCTV footage which emerged on Tuesday shows that the charity worker was still alive when two police officers passed by. But instead of stopping to help, they let go his killers and drove away. Read more...

A Samba street party on its way to a town in south Lebanon was stopped in its tracks after a group of religious dignitaries labelled it "pornographic" and "against Muslim beliefs". According to one of our Lebanese Observers, the decision is a disgrace to the country. Read more...

Brazil gets a bad rap when it comes to violent crime. Until recently however, the capital city of Brasilia had managed to keep up a decent reputation. Not anymore. One of our Observers in the city says the proof is in the security; electric fences around homes, private surveillance systems.... Brasilia's wealthy residents are clearly not taking any chances. Read more...

Rio de Janeiro authorities have begun building concrete walls around the city's shantytowns. Officially they're being erected to prevent environmental damage to the surrounding areas. But the residents of these favelas see it as a way of creating distance between themselves and the not-too-faraway, well-off neighbours. Read more...

Photo by Choque.

Brazilian media can’t decide whether these graffiti are the work of artists or of delinquents. But for their authors, “pichaçao” is all about living dangerously. Read more and view the photos…

Scantily dressed women being roughed up by men in uniform - advertisers might think it's sexy, but Neapolitans certainly don't. Read more...

The anti-capitalist World Social Forum is in its ninth year. But while this year's event, held in Belem, has attracted an impressive 100,000 people, the crowds aren't as large as in 2005, when participants in Porto Alegré, Brazil, numbered 155,000. One of our Observers, who attended both forums, compares the two. Read more...

The ninth World Social Forum, in Belem, north Brazil, has attracted a massive 100,000 leftist activists this year. One of them is Stéphane Le Borgne, a French entrepreneur who runs a fair trade business. He tells us what's going on. Read more and see his photos...

Eleven year old Ágatha Marquez dos Santos is the most recent victim of a police crackdown in South America’s biggest shanty-town, Rocinha. Agatha was watching TV at her father’s house when a rifle bullet flew straight into her chest. Here’s the account from our Observer in Rocinha. Read more...