Paulo Rebêlo Wired News June, 2002 Few people enjoy taking medicine, but how about if it came packaged in candy or ice cream? That’s what the Brazilian National Association of Magistral Pharmaceutics (Anfarmag) is bringing to Brazil this year. In an official note earlier this month, Anfarmag said that med-candies are the best solution for kids who face problems swallowing pills or just can’t stand the taste of some medicine. “Children don’t refuse medicine when they taste and are shaped

Paulo Rebêlo Wired News May 2002 In another attempt to close the gap between the wired and the unwired, Brazil will install computer kiosks in post offices around the country, where people will be able to log on to the Internet. Correios, Brazil’s postal agency, hopes to have the kiosks up and running by the end of June, officials said. People will be able to surf the Web and retrieve e-mail. As a way of encouraging people to use the

Paulo Rebêlo Wired News May 2002 An illegal but well-known underground market for genetically modified crops is growing fast in Brazil. But oftentimes, farmers who bought the seeds with promises of better yields at lower costs have reaped financial disasters and plantation damages instead. The problem seems to stem not from defective genetically modified organism (GMO) crops, but from a lack of understanding by farmers who purchase the crops, which are supposedly imported from Argentina or from other regions of

Paulo Rebêlo Wired News March 2002 Frustrated by a government that either can’t or won’t address epidemic levels of commercial piracy, a broad coalition of Brazilian industry created an advertising campaign it hopes will appeal to Brazilians’ sense of fair play and economic self-interest. The industries of software, music, clothes, toys, cable TV and movies have mounted a $1.5 million national campaign that will include ads in television, newspapers and online outlets. The message is that piracy that hurts Brazilian

Paulo Rebêlo Wired News March 2002 In the United States, printer companies reap most of their profits by selling ink cartridges rather than the printers themselves. That’s not necessarily true in Brazil, where remanufactured ink cartridges sell for less than half the price of the original. Despite efforts by big companies to convince consumers that retread cartridges might damage their printers, Brazilians continue flocking to the refills, apparently figuring that the risk is offset by the printers’ relatively inexpensive cost.