Excuse me, waiter, but why is my caipirinha glowing?

Researchers in Brazil say they've found a faster way to age the liquor used to make the country's signature cocktail -- zap it with gamma radiation for a few minutes, rather than let it sit in barrels.

Brazilian health officials say doctors will be required to notify authorities of every HIV case in the nation.

Until now, doctors were only required to notify state and federal officials when patients developed AIDS.

Hundreds of visitors are flocking daily to a botanical garden in southeastern Brazil to watch the rare blooming of the Titan arum, the world's smelliest and largest tropical flower.

Also known as the "corpse flower" because of a smell likened to rotting flesh, it began blooming on Christmas Day and is already beginning to close, botanist Patricia Oliveira told Agence France Presse.

President Dilma Rousseff urged businesses Sunday to expand their investments as Brazil cuts energy costs, in a bid to curb poverty and improve flagging industrial competitiveness.

"Our recipe for a stronger Brazil is to invest in overcoming poverty, guaranteeing home ownership, expanding employment, increasing education opportunities and improving our infrastructure and the competitiveness of our companies," Rousseff said in a Christmas broadcast to the nation.

The newly appointed deputy chief of the United Nations HIV-fighting program, Brazilian Luiz Loures, hailed his own country's achievements in the fight against the deadly global epidemic in an interview published Saturday.

"We are beginning to talk of the end of the epidemic. Scientific progress makes it possible," Loures told the daily Folha de Sao Paulo, estimating the milestone could come within the next 15 years.

Brazil President Dilma Rousseff has inaugurated the second stadium designated to stage 2014 World Cup matches.

The Mineirao venue at Belo Horizonte, which has undergone a $1,750 million renovation, was given the presidential seal of approval on Friday, five days after the first arena at Fortaleza was given the all clear.

It's not your Apple's iPhone.

A Brazilian company has begun selling smartphones with the iPhone brand after winning the legal right to use the name in Latin America's biggest country. Adding insult to Apple Inc.'s injury, the phone runs on Android operating system from archrival Google Inc.

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Since it arrived in Brazil 15 months ago, the website has attracted one million lusty Brazilians, turning this South American country of 194 million people into one of the biggest markets for the Canadian company.

Brazil is worried that fears over a single case of mad cow disease from more than two years ago could force it to slash its beef prices, after China, Japan and South Africa this week suspended imports.

Agricultural officials here insist there is "no risk whatsoever to public health or to animal hygiene" from the lone case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) that was detected in an animal that died in 2010 in the southern state of Parana.

Brazil, the world's top beef meat exporter, sought Tuesday to calm fears over the discovery of an atypical case of mad cow disease that led Japan to suspend its imports.

The case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was detected in an animal that died in 2010 in the southern state of Parana.