Brazilian music has been well known internationally since João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and others first exported samba to the USA in the late 1950s.

More recently Brazil has proved it is serious about building on this cultural heritage by appointing another successful musician as Minister of Culture.

As well as being an internationally famous musician in his own right, Gilberto Gil has also spent the last 5 years championing Brazilian music, film, painting, sculpture and literature at home. He resigned from government in July to be able to focus on making music once again.

Combining a musical career with a political role has included contentious issues such as digital copyrights and Gil has been in a unique position to understand both sides of the argument.

He has pioneered innovative approaches to copyright issues, for example forming a collaboration between Brazil and the Creative Commons movement.

Other initiatives included schemes which have encouraged video and music creation in some of the poorest parts of Brazil.

Read more in this article from the International Herald Tribune.

Do you love to take photos of beautiful places you visit, only to leave them languishing in a remote corner of your hard drive when you get home? Here is a chance to dust them off and share them with the rest of the world.

Photo sharing service Pikeo together with Lonely Planet are holding a competition for photos of 4 cities: Paris, London, Barcelona and Istanbul.

The winning photo in each category will be used on the cover of a Lonely Planet Encounters City Guide. Other prizes include a trip to India, Nairobi, Morocco or Russia, Lonely Planet guides and Pikeo photo books.

The competition is open to anyone (from any country) who signs up for a Pikeo account. More details here. It’s open until September 8th so get shooting!

Read more:
Lonely Planet’s guide to the world in Topics of the World.
Paris Daily Photo blog from Blogs of the World.

If you are a hungry foreigner in Spain the first thing you will notice is that local mealtimes may be rather later than what you’re used to. Lunch is served between 2pm and 4pm, and nobody eats dinner in the evening before 9pm.

However if you can hold out until lunchtime there are some treats in store and Travels with a Gourmet will help you find them. Most posts are about Marbella, where she lives, but there are also recommendations on where to eat and what to order for Madrid and Barcelona. Reviews are interspersed with recipe ideas.

She doesn’t confine her gastronomical adventures to Spain, either. London, Paris, Buenos Aires and Portugal all get a look in.

Thanks to Aldo from Barcelona for recommending this blog.

Read more:
Spanish blogs in Blogs of the World
More on food around the world in Topics of the World

The 2008 Olympics, hosted by China, began on Friday 8th August with a spectacular opening ceremony.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, an acclaimed Chinese filmmaker, the ceremony showed scenes representing triumphs from China’s past, including famous Chinese inventions such as gunpowder, the compass and paper.

Read more in this article from BBC News, and look at fantastic photos posted by The Boston Globe.

Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images (via The Boston Globe)

Toyota and Japan Rail are testing an innovative new vehicle for public transport. The vehicles are a cross between train and bus - they have rubber tyres for use on roads and steel wheels for travelling on rails. They can swap from one to the other in less that 15 seconds.

Photo: NeiTech (Flickr)

They are perfect for use in areas where the population is not high enough to justify a rail network - people can get picked up by the bus which then drives via road to the rail track to continue its journey.

Wired blog explains more and claims this would also be a perfect transport solution in parts of the USA.