Carine Felizardo, a curvy model from the northern state of Para was late Friday crowned Miss Bumbum, a title rewarding Brazil's sexiest female derriere.

A jury of six women and five men picked the 25-year-old Felizardo among 15 finalists in the second annual edition of the contest, held in a Sao Paulo hotel.

Deforestation of Brazil's Amazon has slowed for a fourth consecutive year to its lowest rate since authorities began monitoring the world's largest rainforest, officials said Tuesday.

The National Institute of Space Research found that the Amazon lost 4,656 square kilometers (1,797 square miles) of rain forest over a period running from August 2011 to July 2012, 27 percent less than the previous year.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has warned that too much austerity could make it difficult for the 17-nation eurozone to emerge from the financial crisis it has endured for four years.

Rousseff says the austerity measures that Spain and other members of the zone have invoked should include more flexibility so high unemployment can be reduced. When the financial crisis hit Brazil in 2008, Rousseff's predecessor went on a government spending spree.

Brazilian researchers are turning to cloning to help fight the perilous decline of several animal species.

The scientists at Brazil's Embrapa agriculture research agency said this week they have spent two years building a gene library with hundreds of samples from eight native species, including the collared anteater, the bush dog, the black lion tamarin, the coati, and deer and bison varieties, as well as the leopard and the maned wolf.

Scientists in Brazil will try cloning endangered animal species like the jaguar, a researcher said Wednesday.

"The idea is to start with an animal that is endangered, or where species numbers have gone down sharply, such as the jaguar, the maned wolf or even the local deer," said Carlos Frederico Martins, a researcher with Embrapa Cerrado.

On a trek across this Atlantic rainforest reserve in southern Brazil, biologist Michel Garey recalled how on his birthday in 2007 he chanced upon what turned out to be a new species of tiny, three-fingered frogs.

"I was doing research with two friends on a hilltop in the reserve and I stumbled into this unusual frog with only three fingers," he told a small group of reporters this week on a tour of Salto Morato, a nature preserve owned by Brazil's leading cosmetic firm Boticario.

There was screaming. There was fainting. It doesn't happen every day: a car washer in Brazil walked into his own wake, where his distraught family was already weeping over their loss.

"People were so startled. Women were fainting, people started running all over the place," said Maria Menezes, one of the mourners at the event in Alagoinhas, in Salvador de Bahia state, G1 news reported.

A bus plunged into a ravine in a mountainous area of Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state on Monday, killing 11 people and injuring eight others, firefighters said.

The vehicle, which had about 30 passengers on board, collided with a car, before plummeting into the ravine, according to the Globo channel's G1 website.

President Dilma Rousseff wants to introduce public service quotas for black Brazilians as a way to repay a historic debt for centuries of slavery and discrimination, a government source said Monday.

The official told AFP that the government is considering adopting a quota system for new public service contracts and exams to benefit Afro-Brazilians, who make up the country's majority but remain at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday told Brazil's foreign minister his country should boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the future, Peres' office said.

"We expect Brazil to boycott future meetings with Ahmadinejad," Peres was quoted as saying to visiting Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota in a statement.