BREAKING NEWS

Colorful president who helped stabilize Brazil dies

SAO PAULO - Itamar Franco, a flamboyant former Brazilian president who helped put an end to hyperinflation in the early 1990s and pave the way for his country's current economic boom, died on Saturday of complications from leukemia. He was 81.
Franco, who was also known internationally for a scandal involving a half-naked model at Carnival that nearly cost him the presidency, governed Brazil from 1992 to 1994.