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The probe into corruption at Petrobras, is known as "Operation Car Wash," because some of the payments were routed through a car wash company in Curitiba, Brazil, which caught the attention of a young federal prosecutor in that city. The investigation took a new turn with the arrest by Brazilian police of the heads of two large construction companies, Marcelo Odebrecht of Odebrecht SA, and the CEO of Andrade Gutierrez, on June 18, 2015. Investigators say construction executives in collusion with Petrobras officials inflated the price of contracts and made payments to politicians and political parties including the ruling Workers Party. The alleged amount is about $2 billion. The construction companies are active in shipbuilding, defense contracting, oil and exploration related work, and building the stadiums for the World Cup Soccer and the Olympics. This has damaged the credibility of the ruling Workers Party, former president Da Silva, and current president Dilma Rousseff, in power during the last decade. The companies and the Workers' Party denied any involvement. Federal prosecutor Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima told a news conference in Curitiba- "We have no doubt that Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez headed the cartel scheme within Petrobras." Adding that the two companies "cannot pass themselves off as innocent given how much evidence we have."...

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Benjamin Pavrd's 20 yard goal with France behind 2-1 against Argentina in the World Cup will be remembered as the goal of the tournament. Pavard's parents living near the Belgian border in a small town made great sacrifices, and travelled a lot to send Pavard out at 10 years to practice soccer with teams in France including Lille. 

He accepted an offer from Stuttgart after getting few opportunities to play in Lille. He was also made part of the 23 member team for France only when a player could not play due to injury.

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Six cities have rejected the Olympics, with Calgary in Canada being the last one. The problem with hosting the Olympics is how much it costs. Cost overruns are common. 20141 Sochi WInter Olympics estimated budget was $10 billion, in the end it cost $51 billion. 

Brazil is the latest example of the problem. With huge needs in sanitation, epidemic prevention, infrastructure and public services, the country did badly by spending money on new soccer stadiums in the northeast which were not used after the World Cup soccer championship, and in the summer Olympics. 

Learning from these lessons voters in Calgary, Canada, rejected hosting  the Winter Olympics. Voters or local councils in Innsbruck, Austria, Rome, Italy, Bern, Switzerland, Hamburg, Germany, Oslo and Stockholm have rejected the idea of hosting the Olympics. Other problems are the environmental impact with deforestation to create Olympic sites.

 

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Brazil held the Olympics and the World Soccer Cup, building new stadiums and living off the boom in oil and metals prices under previous governments. Today not only is there a lack of funding for infrastructure, healthcare, education and transportation.   This is now leading to lack of investment in healthcare services in a shocking way. The first full blown epidemic of yellow fever is hitting Brazil's cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Officials fear that it will spread in an area that has 23 million people if it hits the slums where A.aegyoti mosquitoes are to be found in swarms. Rio and Sao Paulo are trying to tackle it by vaccinating 23 million people. Yellow fever kills about 3-8% of people affected. The economic crisis with lack of funds, and the political crisis that has affected Brazil with corruption scandals has led to a delayed response, according to experts at UCLA infectious disease center.  The disease is traced to loggers and monkeys in the Amazon region which usually remains contained in that region. SInce 2016 the lack of a strong official response has led to the crisis where monkeys carry it a mile a day all the way south to the Rio and Sao Paulo region. A effective government response would have included the use of media to educate people on the need for vaccination for all except newborns and pregnant mothers. Instead social media Facebook and You Tube spread the idea that the vaccination was dangerous, anti vaccine persons who normally got no audience trashed the vaccine. So that today public health authorites have to deal with this problem. The vaccination is highly effective and invented in the 1930's, was not started till November 2016, even though the spread southward from the Amazon region started in 2016. In fact says Dr Marquez, an expert at the University of Pittsburgh, only one in 100,000 gets a reaction and one in a million dies. He says compared to this 6% of 30 million people in the region affected could lose their lives, or  2 million deaths. ...