Rousseff stressed that human rights should not be “a weapon for ideological political warfare.”

Traders said a large order to sell dollars may have helped strengthen the Brazilian currency, while investors may also have been positioning themselves for Wednesday’s holiday in the state of Sao Paulo, when markets will be shut.

The dollar gained to BRL1.7652 in the middle of the session, but then slumped late in the afternoon. At 1853 GMT the dollar was trading at BRL1.7529, still slightly weaker from BRL1.7490 late Monday, according to Tullett Prebon via Factset.

Global markets took fright as Greece’s debt renegotiations appeared to stumble. John Chambers, head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings committee, said Greece is “in all likelihood” headed for a default in the first half of 2012.

Police inspector Antonio Ricardo L. Nunes said he questioned show participants a day after the wildly popular program announced that contestant Daniel Echaniz was being thrown out over suspicions of “gravely inadequate” behavior.

While low levels of the fungicide were not dangerous and it planned no juice recall, the FDA said it would stop all shipments at the border if it found more traces of carbendazim, which is banned in the United States.

The pesticide is legal in Brazil, which supplies more than one-tenth of U.S. orange juice.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates fungicides in the United States, conducted an initial risk assessment for the chemical and found it does not raise safety concerns, according to the FDA’s letter.

Brands such as Tropicana, from PepsiCo Inc, and Minute Maid, from Coca-Cola Co, may use a mix of juices sourced from Brazil and the United States.

The FDA could not immediately comment on what level of carbendazim would be acceptable.

The EPA considers 80 parts per billion to be a health risk. The levels of the fungicide reported recently by a juice company to the FDA were below that level, the FDA said.

Orange juice futures jumped almost 11 percent to an all-time high on Tuesday, as fears spread that U.S. regulators could ban orange juice from Brazil, the world’s largest orange juice exporter.

Christian Lohbauer, spokesman for CitrusBR, the association that represents Brazil’s four main orange juice producers, said Brazil has been using the fungicide for more than 20 years. It is used to fight blossom blight and black spot, a type of mold that grows on orange trees.

“Any shipment (of orange juice) will test positive,” he said. “I don’t know what is the level that they will decide is the maximum level,” he said. “Our interest now is that juice keeps entering the United States.”

He said all Brazilian orange juice is routinely tested for this fungicide, but has never before been stopped by U.S. customs over this issue.

A juice company told the FDA two weeks ago that it had found low levels of the substance in orange juice sold in the United States. The FDA did not say which company had informed it about the fungicide.

Coke spokesman Dan Schafer referred reporters to the Juice Products Association for comment “as this is an issue that impacts every company that produces products in the U.S. containing orange juice from Brazil.”

Association officials were not immediately available to comment. PepsiCo had no immediate comment.

Total frozen and fresh orange juice imports in 2010 came to nearly 1 billion liters, according to U.S. International Trade Commission data. Of that almost half, about 460 million liters, came from Brazil, with Mexico supplying about a third.

The FDA said in an email to Reuters that much of the orange juice tested did not have detectable levels of the fungicide. For those that did, the levels were between 10 and 35 parts per billion, less than half the 80 parts per billion level that would be considered a health risk by the EPA.

The EPA could not be immediately reached for comment.

Forecasts for Brazil’s benchmark inflation rate in 2012 fell to 5.33 percent from 5.39 percent previously, down for the fourth week in a row, according to the central bank’s Focus survey for the week ending December 23. The central bank expects inflation at 4.7 percent next year.

Brazilian power-distribution companies contracted 1,211.5 megawatts of new energy capacity to be brought online in 2016, mostly made up of wind-power projects, with some hydroelectric and biomass. The average price for all three types of energy was 102.18 Brazilian reais ($55.50) per megawatt-hour, the second-lowest price at a new energy auction since the current system began in 2004.

The iTunes Store in Brazil offers a catalog of more than 20 million songs, including from top Brazilian stars Ivete Sangalo and Marisa Monte, the California-based firm said in a statement.

Also available for purchase and download are a broad selections of international artists such as the Beatles, Rihanna and Coldplay.

Most of the songs are priced at 99 US cents and most albums at $9.99.

Apple said it was also bringing the iTunes Store to 15 other Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.

Apple’s App Store offers more than 500,000 apps to hundreds of millions of iPad, iPhone and iPod users in 123 countries.

Gross domestic product contracted 0.04 per cent in the three months ending on September 30 compared with the previous quarter as weakness in the industrial sector spread to Brazil’s once vibrant consumer.

Figueiredo’s fund trimmed its 2012 inflation forecast to 5.35 percent from 5.65 percent, after the national statistics agency yesterday released new weightings for items in its benchmark IPCA price index, he said.

Officials think 200 to 330 barrels of oil leaked each day from Nov. 8 through Tuesday, the Ibama agency said in a statement on its website.

Chevron has said that 400 to 650 barrels of oil in total leaked into the ocean. Officials are still investigating the exact cause of the leak, which has been almost entirely contained, but the Ibama statement said it was a result of the drilling.

A spokesman for Brazil’s Federal Police, which has opened an investigation into the spill, said that Chevron “drilled about 500 meters (1,640 feet) farther than they were licensed to do.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

The leak occurred at a drilling site about 230 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

Rio state Environment Minister Carlos Minc said earlier he was sure the leak was larger than Chevron estimated and he called for more transparency from the company.

“We can’t trivialize this,” he told the Globo TV network. “It’s really serious and we don’t yet know all the consequences.”