At least 11 people died and six were still missing after torrential rains lashed in Brazil's northeastern Bahia state, a Civil Defense official said Monday.

Some 70 homes were completely destroyed and 200 others damaged in the town of Lajedinho during a violent weekend storm, the spokesman told Agence France Presse.

"Welcome to Nelson Mandela" says graffiti emblazoned over a bullet-pocked portrait of the late South African icon that greets visitors to the gritty slum in Rio de Janeiro.

Mandela visited Brazil twice but never came to this shanty town admiring locals named after him, honoring his legacy as an anti-apartheid fighter.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will travel to South Africa to attend the funeral of late leader Nelson Mandela next week, her office said Friday.

Her government also decreed seven days of national mourning in honor of Mandela, who passed away at his home in Johannesburg on Thursday at the age of 95.

Customs agents at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport thwarted at dawn Monday an attempt to smuggle several kilograms of cocaine into Lebanon from Brazil, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said a 37-year-old Brazilian was arrested after the agents found 6 kilos of the drugs stashed "professionally" in a briefcase with a double bottom.

With one thunderous crash, Brazil's troubled preparations for the World Cup are thrown in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, just as soccer gears up for the high-profile setting of the schedule for next year's big event.

Part of the stadium that will host the tournament's opening match collapsed Wednesday, killing two workers and aggravating already urgent worries that Brazil won't be ready.

Russian authorities released a Brazilian Greenpeace activist from prison in Saint Petersburg on Wednesday after she was granted bail, the first of 20 arrested campaigners set to leave jail.

Ana Paula Maciel, a deckhand on Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise ship, walked out of jail following two months in detention after she and 18 crewmates were granted bail, the group said.

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region rose 28 percent over the past year, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said Thursday, announcing she was calling an emergency meeting to try to remedy the situation.

"We confirm a 28-percent increase in the rate of deforestation, reaching 5,843 square kilometers (2256 square miles)," Teixeira told a press conference, citing provisional statistics for August 2012 through July this year.

Political correctness took a distant back seat late Wednesday as Brazil's business hub of Sao Paulo played host to tabloid heaven with a contest honoring women's rear ends.

Namely, the 2013 edition of Miss Bum Bum -- in which 15 young women competed for the right to be crowned as the owner of the most delightful derriere.

Some 30 people were hospitalized after a major fire destroyed a gymnasium in central Sao Paulo, Brazil early Friday, firefighters said.

A spokeswoman for the fire department said the blaze was now under control but scores of residents from an adjacent 150-apartment building had to be evacuated as dense smoke spread.

Brazilian judges have given U.S. Internet search giant Google until Saturday to turn over private data collected through its Street View program, press reports said Thursday.

Failure to do so would mean a daily fine of $50,000, up to a maximum of $500,000.