Yahoo! Brazil includes more than 12,000 Brazilian Web sites, aside from other Portuguese-language Web sites, and features free e-mail and regional sports, entertainment and general news stories.

The new guide marks Yahoo!'s 19th property in its global network.

"With Yahoo! Brazil, Internet users in Brazil now have an easy way to find and get connected to anything and anyone in their local area or around the world," said Heather Killen, vice president, International at Yahoo! Inc. "By expanding our offerings in Latin America, we're lending strong support to the growth of Internet usage in the region."

The guide's featured directory was organized by a team of Brazilian Web surfers to provide categories for the most relevant Portuguese-language Web sites.

Yahoo! Brazil also brokered content deals with Brazilian news services Agencia Estado and Agencia JB, as well as partnerships with business and finance news providers Gazeta Mercantil, CMA, and Safras and entertainment news source 89 Rockwave. Sports news will be provided by Gazeta Esportiva and Lance!.

Charter advertising sponsors include Banco Santos, Canal Fox, Embratel, Hedging Griffo, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, MTV and Xerox.

According to research firm IDC, Brazil has the largest population of Internet users in Latin America, with approximately 2.3 million Internet users now and a projected population of 5.1 million users by the year 2002.

Yahoo! last year launched Yahoo! en espanol, a Spanish-language Web guide, which features regionally focused content for Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.

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