What's new

In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, a Starbucks coffee shop looks as it would in the United States. It has the same jazzy music; the same items on the menu.

There is one thing that is different, though: the prices.

"Everyone told me it's expensive, but when you see it yourself it's shocking," says one customer, Thierry, who is from Geneva and is in town for a wedding.

The largest-size chai latte costs nearly $6. Over the weekend, a Brazilian magazine posed the question of whether Sao Paulo has the most expensive pizza in the world. The answer? Yes — an average pie will run $30 to $40. A pair of name-brand running shoes costs $150 to $300.

Thierry warns those coming from outside the country that they better start saving now.

Related NPR Stories

Latin America

From The Stone Age To The Digital Age In One Big Leap

This week marked a new step in Michelle Obama's evolution as first lady. In her hometown of Chicago, she delivered one of the most emotional speeches of her career — about kids dying from gun violence.

"I'm not talking about something that's happening in a war zone halfway around the world," she said. "I am talking about what's happening in the city that we call home."

Michelle Obama almost never ventures into the top political controversy of the day. Instead, she has spent her time in the White House focusing mostly on child nutrition and military families. But the first lady's role may be changing in President Obama's second term.

Two months ago, she went to Chicago for the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton. Pendleton was an innocent 15-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet a week after she performed at inaugural festivities. At the funeral, the first lady turned to her friend and adviser, Valerie Jarrett.

"She leaned over and she said, 'I have to come back to Chicago. We have to do more. I don't want to just attend a funeral. I want to make a difference,' " Jarrett says.

That shows a level of confidence and assertiveness Obama hasn't always had as first lady. People who know her best say she's more comfortable in the role than ever before. She now understands the levers of power.

"Appreciating what a first lady can do to make a big impact is something that evolves over time," Jarrett says.

There's no job description for first lady. No statutory authority. And Jarrett says that during the first term, Obama's top concern was her daughters' transition to a new life.

"The girls are four years older. They're much more independent now, they have schedules of their own, they're thriving, and so she has a little bit more flexibility with her time," Jarrett says.

Aides to the first lady say Obama doesn't plan on launching big new initiatives in the second term. Instead, she'll expand her two signature projects: Joining Forces, which is about veterans and military families; and Let's Move, which focuses on childhood obesity.

"Mississippi saw a 13 percent decrease in childhood obesity over the last few years, which is extraordinary," says Sam Kass, Let's Move's executive director. "Places in New York and Philadelphia and in L.A., we're starting to see real declines — which is really substantial."

In the past four years, Let's Move cut deals with major supermarkets, restaurant chains and school lunch programs. In the next term, Kass says the program will work on information for parents and advertising for kids.

For example, Birds Eye Vegetables recently teamed up with Nickelodeon's iCarly. "And during that time that they did that partnership, they saw a 37 percent increase in sales of vegetables," Kass says.

At the same time, some big candy and soda companies have agreed to stop targeting certain products to young kids.

Myra Gutin of Rider University, who studies the history of first ladies, says Michelle Obama's activities look a lot like what she calls "activist" first ladies, in the mold of Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Hillary Clinton and others.

"The activist first ladies certainly are at more risk for making a mistake, and that could end up taking up some of their husband's political capital," Gutin says. "But at least in my research, I've never found that that worry has really stopped them very much."

Obama's stumbles have been few, says Anita McBride of American University. There was a lavish trip to Spain and party crashers at the first White House state dinner. But McBride, who was first lady Laura Bush's chief of staff, says the White House recovered quickly.

"I think she learned from it, and you haven't seen that happen again," McBride says. "But overall on the development of issues, you know, I think they have done a very good job."

As often as not, Obama lands in the spotlight for reasons of style rather than substance. A new haircut becomes a major national news story.

"It is not a normal life that a person leads," says Ebs Burnough, deputy social secretary during the Obamas' first term. "But when it comes, I think, particularly to style, etc., she is great about saying, 'It comes with the territory but, you know, I'm not focusing on it.' "

While any first lady gets constant scrutiny, Michelle Obama is special. At 49, she's younger than most people who have held the job, the first woman of color in the role and the only first lady in an age of Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and YouTube.

Lately, she seems to be having more fun with it all, whether showing up on the Oscars or doing a "mom dance" with Jimmy Fallon.

In that appearance, Fallon asked if she would consider running for office in 2016. Obama said she'd rather host The Tonight Show.

President Obama's nominee to lead the Labor Department has been one of the most aggressive advocates for civil rights in decades. Tom Perez prosecuted a record number of hate crimes cases and extracted huge settlements from banks that overcharged minorities for home loans.

But some Republican lawmakers say those same qualities give them pause about voting to confirm Perez as a Cabinet member.

'Making A Huge Difference'

As the son of Dominican immigrants, and a guy who helped put himself through Ivy League schools by working as a garbage collector, Perez knows something about climbing the ladder.

"Over my career, I've learned that true progress is possible if you keep an open mind, listen to all sides and focus on results," he said last month during the White House rollout of his nomination.

About those results: For more than three years, Perez has run the civil rights unit as an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, where he has sued Texas and South Carolina over voting rights and searched for abusive law enforcement patterns in more than a dozen police departments.

Perez has done something else, too, says Mark Perriello, president of the American Association of People With Disabilities.

"All the work that he has done to secure the rights of people with disabilities to live independently in the community, to have access to polling, to have access to simple things like technology and watching Netflix with your family at home at night has been nothing less than stellar," Perriello says. "He is making a huge difference."

Perriello and dozens of other disability rights advocates have just launched a campaign to support Perez as labor secretary.

It's support the nominee may need to counter vocal opposition from Republican lawmakers like Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley.

"This person's going to have trouble — both through the committee process and on the floor," Grassley says. "He's got a lot of questions to answer."

A Quid Pro Quo?

Grassley and two House Republicans, Darrell Issa of California and Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, released a report late Sunday that blasted Perez for his role in what they call a quid pro quo last year, when the Justice Department agreed not to support a big whistle-blower lawsuit against St. Paul, Minn., for mishandling federal money.

The report drafted by congressional Republicans says Perez's testimony about the episode conflicts with that of other accounts from people inside the Justice Department and lawyers in Minnesota who worked on the issue.

"Perez's inconsistent testimony on a range of subjects calls into question the reliability of his testimony and raises questions about his truthfulness during his transcribed interview," the report said.

The report also alleges Perez engineered a plan to back away from the whistle-blower case without notifying his superiors or ethics lawyers at Justice about all the facts, and that he meddled with the decision-making by career lawyers in the government, while asking them to avoid putting the details in writing, placing "ideology over objectivity and politics over the rule of law."

The situation "confused and frustrated the career Justice Department attorneys ... who described the situation as 'weirdness,' 'ridiculous' and 'cover your head ping pong,' " the report added.

Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson defended Perez's actions in an emailed statement. "The resolution reached in these cases was in the best interests of the United States and consistent with the Department's broad discretion to consider policy and other factors — including pending litigation — in resolving False Claims Act [whistle-blower] matters," Iverson said.

She pointed out that private plaintiffs still were allowed to move forward with their whistle-blower case.

"The Department's decision was appropriate, and followed an examination of the relevant facts, legal, and policy considerations at issue, and following Mr. Perez's consultation with career ethics officers," she added.

St. Paul leaders agreed to drop their Supreme Court challenge to a legal tool known as disparate impact theory that the Justice Department often uses in housing discrimination cases. (For an explanation of disparate impact theory, check out this interview on NPR's Tell Me More. There's more background on the Supreme Court case and the St. Paul whistle-blower lawsuit in The Two-Way blog.)

Grassley says that kind of arrangement is not against the law, "but it looks pretty bad right now when somebody at that high level of government makes a quid pro quo that costs the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars ... just for the purpose, for philosophical or ideological purposes, to get a case to the Supreme Court dropped."

Facing Questions

Asked if he would be prepared to block the Perez nomination, Grassley replied: "I'm at least prepared to resist any attempt to bring it up until we get all of our questions answered."

At his Senate confirmation hearing before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, Perez could face even more questions about his management at the Justice Department's civil rights unit. The department's inspector general recently concluded the atmosphere there is filled with partisanship and bullying, though watchdogs say most of that trouble dates back a decade, before Perez arrived.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is planning its own hearing this week on those issues. In a statement to NPR, Goodlatte, the committee chairman, said he was "shocked the President is moving forward with this nomination. ... Mr. Perez should face tough questions about this backroom deal he helped coordinate, his role in interfering with a Supreme Court case, and his mismanagement of the Civil Rights Division."

Supporters of Perez say the White House knew all about those controversies when it nominated him to lead the Labor Department. Obama says he wants Perez to play a big role in such issues as long-term unemployment, immigration and the minimum wage.

"His story," the president said last month, "reminds us of this country's promise: That if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is, you can make it if you try."

Perez is in line to become one of the highest-profile Latino Cabinet members in recent memory, if he can get past Senate Republicans.

In 1998, John Curtis and David Wikiera adopted a son from Vietnam and named him John Wikiera.

Enlarge image i