Brazil

Israel has been forced to withdraw their nomination of a settler leader as ambassador to Brazil. Brazil rejected the nomination of Dani Dayan months ago due to  his leadership role in Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Telesur reports: Netanyahu said in a brief statement Monday that Dayan would instead serve as consul general in New York, a post that focuses on Israeli outreach to U.S. Jews and business sectors. Meanwhile, Dayan dismissed the notion that his reassignment was bowing to Brazilian pressure. “I don’t think that we folded.

"Brazil is being governed by a joke,” political commentator Josias de Souza says. “It's turned into an aspiring banana republic."

What was already an unimaginably bad situation took a decisive turn for the worst this week in Brazil when embattled President Dilma Rousseff, fearing that her mentor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was about to be arrested on corruption charges, appointed the former President to a ministerial position.

Just yesterday, we said the following about Brazil: It seems as though this country can’t get through a single day without some piece of political news or economic data creating confusion and turmoil.

We said that on the way to noting that central bank chief Alexandre Tombini looked set to resign for fear that former President Lula’s new cabinet position and attendant promise to "turn the economy around" would lead invariably to government interference in monetary and FX policy.

The Head of the Central Bank in Brazil, Alexandre Tombini, has said that he may resign just days after millions of protestors took to the streets of Sao Paulo demanding that President Dilma Rousseff resigns.  Rousseff faced an impeachment bid following allegations that she defrauded the fiscal books in 2014, but rather than step down she promoted former disgraced President Luiz  Inácio Lula da Silva to a ministry position – angering millions of Brazilian citizens.

It seems as though Brazil can’t get through a single day without some piece of political news or economic data creating confusion and turmoil.

Last weekend, millions of Brazilians took to the streets to call for the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff whose political career and legacy hang in the balance.