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Brazil is in the midst of a building boom as it constructs stadiums across the country in preparation for the World Cup it will host next year. In Sao Paulo, hundreds of workers are building a massive arena that will take many more months to complete.

But not all of the workers are Brazilian.

Marie Eveline Melous, 26, arrived from Haiti just a few months ago because life was so difficult, especially after the huge earthquake in 2010. "It's hard to find work. I came to Brazil to help my situation," she says.

She's now working in the administration department at the stadium construction site, and her Haitian husband works here as a welder.

They are among the lucky ones — they have visas and jobs. But across town there are many more who are struggling to survive.

There are more than 100 Haitians clustered in a dark waiting room at Our Lady of Peace Church in downtown Sao Paulo. They are the newest group of undocumented migrants to come flooding into Brazil.

The Rev. Paulo Parise, who runs the mission, says Brazil has entered a new phase. "Brazil used to export its people overseas, but now we are attracting migrants," he says.

An Emerging Issue

The number of undocumented migrants here is still tiny compared with countries like the U.S., where there are millions of illegal immigrants. Such immigrants make up less than 1 percent of the Brazilian population.

But the number is growing and advocates say Brazil doesn't know how to cope.

In April, a Brazilian state on the Bolivian border declared a state of emergency after only a few thousand Haitians made their way into the country.

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Parallels

Brazil Looks To Build A 10,000-Mile Virtual Fence

While Americans often lament the state of politics in Washington, spare a thought for Australians, who will wake up Thursday morning under a different prime minister than the one they went to bed with.

Just as Australians were preparing for national elections in September, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd took back the reins of power from Julia Gillard, the woman who had deposed him three years before.

Gillard became Australia's first female prime minister by challenging Rudd for the leadership of the ruling Labor Party, as Rudd was floundering in the polls. It was the first time a sitting first-term prime minister had been deposed in Australia.

"Knifed in the back" was how some commentators described it.

Such is the system in Australia, where people don't vote directly for the prime minister but for local members of Parliament; the majority party elects its leader and thus the prime minister.

The U.S. Electoral College has its critics, but at least it provides a certain amount of stability. Love him or hate him, Americans know that, barring any high crimes and misdemeanors, a sitting president will be around until the next election.

In Australia, things can be a bit more abrupt and dramatic.

Rudd might have been down, but he never went out. In a script Machiavelli couldn't have written better, Rudd remained in Parliament, gaining sympathy from the public over his surprise ouster and biding his time until he could once again take the reins of power.

His detractors in Parliament blamed him for leaks that undermined Gillard's government, and the ever-present specter of Rudd's possible return to power was blamed for Gillard's slow decline in popularity.

With an election just two months away and polls showing Labor set for a historic defeat, Rudd's opportunity for a return was at hand. Those same polls showed that if he was in charge, Labor would at least have a fighting chance at the election.

And so, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, "it was dj vu all over again." Rudd moved against Gillard in a late-night leadership challenge, and Gillard went out the same way she came in. Having broken through the glass ceiling for women in Australia, Gillard says she's now quitting the political arena.

Australian politics have often been described as a full-contact sport. There is little sense of the decorum and respect usually seen in the U.S. House or Senate.

While two members of Congress may wildly disagree on an issue, on the floor it's always "the gentleman from Ohio" or the "gentlewoman from California." When Rep. Joe Wilson called President Obama a liar during a 2009 speech to Congress, the rebuke by the House of Representatives was swift.

But on the floor of Australia's Parliament it's not unusual for the party leaders to call each other "liars," "brain-damaged," "gutless," "vermin" ... and worse.

During a fiery debate last October, Gillard labeled the leader of the opposition a misogynist.

The state of Australian politics even led one of the country's most famous exports, actor Russell Crowe, to speak out. During a recent interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Crowe complained:

"It's just a lack of gallantry that has crept into not just politics but the way politics is reported, and I think it gives license to a type of hater that will only further reduce the quality of our lives, you know? The better politicians we have in place, the better our society is going to be, the better all of our lives are."

The job of postmaster general was once one of the country's most politically powerful. It is also one of the oldest; a version of the position existed before the Declaration of Independence.

But today, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe finds himself continually caught in the political crossfire. Donahoe is tangling with unions and members of Congress over how to manage the Postal Service's future — as it faces huge losses, dwindling mail volume and ballooning costs.

It may seem strange now, but Donahoe was originally drawn to postal work by the money.

"$4.76 an hour, and in 1975 that was a lot of money," he recalls, "so I thought, 'Well, I'll try that for a while until I'm done with school,' and I never left."

In 37 years, he has occupied nearly every position at the Postal Service: "vehicle maintenance, airport operations, accounting, personnel, labor relations."

The Postal Service is one of the largest employers in the country, but it is saddled with enormous retirement and health care costs that it cannot afford. It's running billions of dollars in the red and has had to borrow heavily from the U.S. Treasury. Its main source of revenue — first-class mail — is falling off. It is trying to grow its package-delivery business, but there, it competes with FedEx and UPS, and technological change is swift.

Donahoe grew up in Pittsburgh, coming of age at a time when that city was shaped by its own rapidly declining industry.

"In the '80s, we lost the steel industry. Gone! Well, I witnessed 100,000 people lose their jobs because people did not pay attention to what was going on in the economy," he says.

Donahoe is closing some mail-sorting facilities and reducing hours at less-trafficked post offices.

But reining in costs isn't just a business challenge; it's politically fraught. That's because, though its operations are not taxpayer-funded, the Postal Service is also controlled by Congress, which mandates delivery of mail to every household in the United States and requires it to prefund retiree benefits, decades into the future.

This hybrid governance structure, not surprisingly, leads to tension. Donahoe's most public skirmish with Capitol Hill came earlier this year, when he announced plans to save money by ending Saturday letter delivery without congressional approval. Two months later, Congress forced him to scrap those plans.

“ I speak to the people in the field. And time and time again, they've said to me, 'Don't give up on this stuff; my job's at stake.'

The official clock ran out on Texas lawmakers overnight, which effectively killed a bill that would have dramatically restricted abortion in the nation's second most populous state. Hours of chaos and confusion in Austin finally lifted as Texas Senate leaders decided that the vote on Senate Bill 5 did not clear a constitutionally-mandated hurdle that it pass before midnight.

The vote happened at 12:02 a.m. CT, two minutes after the Legislature's mandated end to its special session. (Special sessions in Texas are restricted to 30 days and called by the governor.) Democratic lawmakers, and throngs of protesters that filled the Capitol rotunda, had sought to run out the clock on the vote all day.

There was the daylong filibuster attempt by Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis, nearly an hour of procedural back-and-forth and roaring crowds in the gallery that disrupted order and slowed down the process. The Dallas Morning News describes the scene:

"The extended drama came after Republicans used strict interpretations of Senate rules to knock Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, off her marathon filibuster. The final vote was delayed several minutes by loud applause from the gallery, drowning out the action on the floor."