BRICS news last few weeks

Brazil
From Bloomberg:
Brazil Goes Stumping at the UN  
With the Brazilian presidential race in its final days, and President Dilma Rousseff gunning for reelection, the world is her stump. This week, she took the campaign to First Avenue in Manhattan, where, in shimmering blue and a power bouffant, she hailed the nations, with a nod and a wink to the constituents back home.

Not that her address to the 69th General Assembly was especially moving. As an orator, Rousseff makes a fine technocrat. Yes, she made the obligatory nod to the demands of emerging nations to reform global governance, such as the United Nations Security Council, where Brazil has been angling for a permanent seat.

She took a ritual poke at powers that would bomb enemies instead of negotiating for peace and understanding. Then she scolded the rich world for fumbling the global financial order, apres Lehman Brothers, a crisis she said that Brazil finessed ("Brazil created 12 million jobs") as everyone else issued pink slips............

An extract from summary of speech of Brazilian Prez at UN
On the Israeli-Palestinian crisis Ms. Rousseff deplored the recent “tragic events” in Gaza and the disproportionate use of force that affected civilians, especially women and children, and reiterated her country’s support for a two-State solution, with Palestine and Israel living side by side in security and within internationally recognized borders.

She also condemned “the systematic massacre of the Syrian people; the tragic national destruction of Iraq; the serious insecurity in Libya; the conflicts in the Sahel; and the clashes in Ukraine.”.....

China
From Bloomberg:
Modi Wins $20 Billion Pledge From Xi Amid Border Flare-Up
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a pledge from Chinese President Xi Jinping to invest $20 billion as the leaders sought to adjust a lopsided trade relationship and resolve a flare-up on their disputed border.

Leaders of the world’s two most populous countries today announced a five-year plan in which China would invest $20 billion to help reduce India’s largest trade deficit with any single country. China will also help set up industrial parks in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, which Modi ran before taking power in May.

“We agreed that our economic relations do not do justice to our potential,” Modi said at a joint briefing with Xi in New Delhi today. Modi said he received assurances that China would take steps to address a worsening trade balance between the nations and improve market access.............

From BRICS Post:
China has assured West African nations  that it is committed to assisting them in their fight against the deadly Ebola outbreak, which the World Health Organization said has now killed more than 3,000 people. More than 6,300 have been infected.
“The Chinese government has provided instantly drugs, medical equipment and other disease prevention and relief materials to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told delegates on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

He said that the 170 medical professionals dispatched by Beijing to afflicted areas since the outbreak was first reported in March “work round the clock to help people” who have contracted the disease.
Last week, the Chinese government announced a new aid package of 200 million yuan (about $32.54 million) for West African countries to combat Ebola.
This is in addition to the 230 million yuan sent by China earlier to the four worst affected countries of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria............

From Xinhuanet:
Chinese, Russian FMs meet on closer ties, major issues  
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov here on Friday to discuss the development of closer ties between their two countries and major international issues.
Wang recalled that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Dushanbe not long ago and jointly took part in the first China-Russia-Mongolia trilateral summit as well as the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which all yielded important results.
Both countries should fully implement the consensus reached by the leaders, Wang said during talks with Lavrov on the sidelines of the annual high-level debate of the U.N. General Assembly......

India
From IndiaToday:
Beijing is understood to be  keen on investing 100 billion dollars in the country in the next five years. Xi's big-ticket investments coincide with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of high-speed trains, smart cities, roads and ports, and mega infrastructure and power projects.

India and China will explore the road ahead for Gujarat leading the manufacturing hub project, on the lines of development in Guandong. Two industrial parks - one each in Gandhinagar and Pune - are expected to be announced during this highprofile visit. The Chinese automobile industry is keen to make its presence in Pune and will be exploring options.

China wants to invest big time in bullet trains and other high-speed trains (150-160 km/hr plus), lay the track, invest in automation system and also work on the Metro train system in many of the 50 cities where MRTS (Mass Rapid Transit System) projects are a part of Modi's dream.

The Asian giant seeks to invest in ports, energy sector and also move forward on a key Modi government project - interlinking of rivers and dredging. China, according to sources, has attractive plans on projects close to the prime minister's heart.

From BRICS Post:
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi  in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday vowed that New Delhi will work towards strengthening the United Nations central role.
“No one country can run the world… pitch for UN, multilateralism,” said Modi days ahead of his bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama.
The US Congress on Thursday has ordered a second probe by the US International Trade Commission into India’s “unfair” trade practices, specifically targeting any new policy changes initiated by the new Indian government that was sworn in in May.

Modi also hit back at criticism over India’s blocking of a global trade deal saying that multilateral trade agreements must take into account interests of all stakeholders.
“When we craft agreements on international trade we should accommodate each other’s concerns and interests,” said Modi in New York.

A possible landmark WTO trade deal collapsed earlier this year over objections raised by India, which was seeking to bolster farm protections. India wants to continue with its food security subsidies without attracting sanctions.
At the UNGA, Modi also echoed the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s call for urgent reforms of the UN Security Council to ensure that it remains relevant and effective in dealing with present challenges.......

Russia
From ZeroHedge:
Russia Discovers Massive Arctic Oil Field   Which May Be Larger Than Gulf Of Mexico
In a dramatic stroke of luck for the Kremlin, this morning there is hardly a person in the world who is happier than Russian president Vladimir Putin because overnight state-run run OAO Rosneft announced it has discovered what may be a treasure trove of black oil, one which could boost Russia's coffers by hundreds of billions if not more, when a vast pool of crude was discovered in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean, showing the region has the potential to become one of the world’s most important crude-producing areas, arguably bigger than the Gulf Of Mexico. The announcement was made by Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s chief executive officer, who spent two days sailing on a Russian research ship to the drilling rig where the find was unveiled today.....

....For a sense of how big the spoils are we go to another piece by Bloomberg, which tells us that "Universitetskaya, the geological structure being drilled, is the size of the city of Moscow and large enough to contain more than 9 billion barrels, a trove worth more than $900 billion at today’s prices.".....

From the Summary of speech given at the UNGA by Russia's FM Sergey Lavrov.
Sergey V Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, said that the United States-led Western alliance that portrayed itself as a champion of democracy in fact acted from the direct opposite position and rejected the democratic principle of sovereign equality of States.  That alliance was trying to decide for everyone what was good and what was evil.  The United States Administration had openly declared what it believed to be its right to unilateral use of force anywhere to uphold its own interests.  Military interference had become the norm.

The sustainability of the international system had been severely shaken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) bombardment of the then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, intervention in Iraq, attacks against Libya and the failure of operations in Afghanistan, he said.  It was only due to diplomatic efforts that the aggression against Syria was prevented in 2013.  There was an impression that the goal of various "colour revolutions" and other projects to change unsuitable regimes was to provoke chaos and instability.  Today, Ukraine had fallen victim to such an arrogant policy.  The situation there had revealed the remaining deep-rooted systemic flaws of the existing architecture in the Euro-Atlantic area.  The West had embarked upon the course towards "vertical structuring of humanity", tailored to its own "hardly inoffensive" standards.

The United States and the European Union supported the coup d'état in Ukraine and reverted to outright justification of any acts by the self-proclaimed Kyiv authorities, he said.  Those authorities had opted for suppression by force of the Ukrainian people, who had rejected attempts to impose an unconstitutional way of life on the entire country, and who wanted to defend their rights to their native language and culture.  It was precisely the aggressive assault on those rights that propelled the population of Crimea to take destiny into its own hands and make a choice in favour of self-determination.  Attempts to distort the truth and to hide the facts behind "blanket accusations" had been undertaken at all stages of the Ukrainian crisis.  The Russian Federation was sincerely interested in restoring peace in "the neighbouring country".  The ceasefire agreement signed by Presidents Petro Poroshenkoand Vladimir Putin had created an opening to resolve the situation.

As a condition for establishing diplomatic relations with the then-Soviet Union in 1933, the United States Government had demanded that Moscow guarantee non-interference in the United States’ domestic affairs and not take any actions aimed at changing the United States’ political or social order, he said.  At that time, Washington, D.C., feared a "revolutionary virus", and the guarantees it sought were put on record, on the basis of reciprocity.  Perhaps, it now made sense to return to that topic and reproduce that demand of the United States Government on a universal scale.  The policy of ultimatums and the philosophy of supremacy and domination did not meet the requirements of the twenty-first  century, and ran counter to the objective process of development of a polycentric, democratic world order.....

South Africa
Nothing much happening with South Africa, economy-wise.  All that comes up as news out of South Africa is their delight in prosecuting a white blade runner for the murder of his white girlfriend.