Dilma Rousseff

You couldn't make this stuff up.

On April 17, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff faces an impeachment vote in the lower house of congress. The charge? That she manipulated government accounts to make the deficit look smaller than it really was before the last election.

Brazil's Supreme Court on April 15 rejected a last-ditch attempt by President Dilma Rousseff to halt the impeachment process against her, clearing the way for a key vote in Congress.
 

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff took off the gloves April 12, branding her vice president a traitor and coup-plotter ahead of an impeachment vote in Congress, with a party once in the ruling coalition set to cast a ballot against her.

In a blistering speech, Rousseff, 68, charged: "If there were any doubts about my reporting that a coup is under way, there can't be now." 

Brazil's largest party announced on March 29 it was leaving President Dilma Rousseff's governing coalition and pulling its members from her government, a departure that sharply raises the odds she could be impeached in a matter of months. 

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sworn in as chief of staff to his successor Dilma Rousseff on March 17 as a judge sought to block his appointment and Congress began proceedings to impeach her in a deepening political crisis.

Protests have erupted in Brazil after a recorded phone call between President Dilma Rousseff and her once-popular predecessor was released, suggesting that she appointed him to her cabinet to spare him from arrest for corruption.

Police searched the home of Brazil's powerful ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and detained him for questioning on March 4 in a probe into a huge corruption scheme.

Agents searched his house in Sao Paulo, the offices of the Lula Institute, and houses of family members, Jose Chrispiniano, a spokesman for Lula and his institute, told AFP.

Moody's became the third big agency to cut Brazil's credit rating to junk on Feb. 24, citing mounting debt and political instability in Latin America's biggest country.

Swatting aside fears over the Zika virus, the glittering dancers of the Rio Carnival samba championship and their adoring fans were primed Feb. 7 for their first all-night parade.

During the week, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev was on a five-day official visit to Latin America, meeting both his Brazilian and Argentinian counterparts, namely Dilma Rousseff and Mauricio Macri.

The relations between the EU and Mercosur were in the focus of the talks held by Plevneliev with the political leaders and business representatives of Brazil and Argentina.