The Copa America - the world's oldest international football tournament, going back to 1916, brings together some of the silkiest talents the global game has to offer.

A continental finishing school for the World Cup, or so the theory goes, the tournament allows perennial Latin American giants Brazil and Argentina a perfect opportunity to blood a new generation before, armed with the experience, they graduate to the senior tournament.

Brazil's Samba Girls are through to the quarter-finals with a game to spare and warned possible rivals the United States or Sweden that they won't let the World Cup slip away this time.

Superstar Marta fired the Brazilians into the knockout round with a double and set Rosana up for the third as they demolished former winners Norway 3-0 in Wolfsburg on Sunday night.

The Brazilian government confirmed this week the existence of an uncontacted tribe in a southwestern area of the Amazon rain forest.

Three large clearings in the area had been identified by satellite, but the population's existence was only verified after airplane expeditions in April gathered more data, the National Indian Foundation said in a news release Monday.

Isolina Campos has set out to prove it's never too late to learn to read and write.

Campos turned 100 on May 25, and decided to become an example to others by attending class in Londrina, a city in southern Brazil.

A jumping cockroach, a glow-in-the-dark fungus, a rust-eating bacterium and a leech named "T-rex" were among the top 10 new species discovered in the world last year, US scientists said Monday.

The creatures were uncovered in Brazil, Madagascar, South Africa, Peru, the Philippines, West Africa, the US state of Oregon, the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic Ocean.

Al-Qaida operatives and Hizbullah members are in Brazil planning attacks, raising money and recruiting followers, a leading Brazilian news magazine reported over the weekend.

Veja magazine said that at least 20 people affiliated with the al-Qaida terrorist network as well as Hizbullah and Hamas have been hiding out in the south American country.

A truck and a bus collided in the southern state of Santa Catarina Saturday, killing at least 22 people as Brazil celebrated Carnival, Folha de Sao Paulo reported.

Police told the daily the bus was carrying 47 passengers when it struck a truck near the town of Descanso, 690 kilometers west of the state capital of Florianopolis near Brazil's border with Argentina.

Seventeen people were electrocuted during a freak accident at a large pre-Carnival parade, Brazilian police said Monday.

They said fireworks lit by partygoers caused a power line to fall on a tightly packed crowd dancing behind a large sound truck.

Rear Admiral Luiz Henrique Caroli of Brazil assumed command of the Maritime Task Force (MTF), the naval component of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in a ceremony Thursday aboard a ship at Beirut Harbor.

The first Naval Force to be part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL-MTF has been deployed at the request of the Lebanese government to assist the Lebanese Navy to help prevent the unauthorized entry of arms or related materiel by sea into Lebanon. MTF has been working jointly with the Lebanese Navy to that end.

Brazil legend Ronaldo, whose goals helped his country win two World Cups, has hauled his aching limbs onto the pitch for the last time and will announce his retirement on Monday, Brazilian media said.

"I can't take any more," the 34-year-old star told the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper ahead of a formal announcement expected at a press conference Monday.