Germany's national soccer club, favored by many to win this year's World Cup, is not messing around with their accommodations for next June's tournament. Dissatisfied with Brazil's hotel inventory, the team has decided to instead build a new beach resort as their home base. Financed by a Munich entrepreneur, "Campo Bahia" will have 14 two-story homes for players and team officials, a soccer field, and a media center by the time it finishes construction this spring. It'll be the first time the squad will have its own World Cup facility built from scratch, according to Der Spiegel.

On Tuesday, the world woke up to a new missive from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and no one quite seemed to know what to make of it. In an open letter to the people of Brazil in that country's Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, Snowden appeared to make a subtle appeal for asylum from the Brazilian government -- and maybe hinted that he would help Brazil fight back against NSA surveillance in exchange for their protection.

For the past three decades, Brazilian “telenovelas” have helped Cubans forget their litany of woes for an hour a day. But today, dozens of South Korean soap operas are earning wide audiences. Following in the footsteps of South Korean films and K-pop, “doramas” — South Korean soaps dubbed into Spanish — first appeared on Cuban televisions earlier this year.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's popularity continued to recover in November thanks to her government's social programs and a slowdown in inflation, a poll showed on Friday, making her the clear favorite in next year's presidential vote. Seventy-five percent of respondents rated Rousseff's government "good/great" or "average" in the latest Ibope/CNI poll. That was up from 72 percent in September and 65 percent in July, when millions of Brazilians took to the streets to protest poor public transportation, corruption and crime.

The 2014 World Cup draw that grouped Iran with heavyweights Argentina has provoked thousands of Iranians to trash the Facebook page of Argentine superstar Lionel Messi. Iran was drawn in Group F alongside Argentina, reigning African champions Nigeria and newcomers Bosnia-Herzegovina, and will open their fourth campaign in the final stages of the World Cup on June 16.

Brazil's government tourism authority Embratur took advantage of today's live World Cup draw to start targeting online videos at potential visitors to Brazil from key tourism markets. The draw, eagerly awaited by soccer fans around the world, places the 32 national teams in 8 groups and determines which teams will play each other first, and in which of the 12 Brazilian cities that will host World Cup games starting in June 2014.

Rio de Janeiro's shanty towns, its favelas, long stricken by poverty and violence, have a new boogeyman: Gentrification. First, only academics were worried about whether gentrification might really be happening in the favelas. Those fears have since migrated from anxious blog entries to coverage in major newspapers.

The 1971 Volkswagen bus, painted in the green, yellow and white of Brazil's flag, picked a good place to break down. Emilio Zagaia and Felipe Luis da Costa had just arrived in the small Guatemalan city of Coban. They were two Brazilians in a strange town, but they received some unexpected help right away. "The city's local Volkswagen club is looking for you," their mechanic told them. "They saw your car and took a picture of it."