The passage of market-friendly reforms in Brazil might be delayed until the next presidential administration because of a government corruption probe, the country's central bank President Arminio Fraga said yesterday. A former top government official said he had access to a secret senate ballot list and identified former senate head and ex-presidential ally Antonio Carlos Magalhaes in the scandal. Brazil's elections take place in 2002, and a new administration would be sworn in the following January. First it was blood diamonds, now electronics manufacturers are being urged to stop buying illegally mined metal ore, taken from wildlife preserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo . U.S.-based Electronic Components, Assemblies and Materials Association, a trade group for companies who manufacture small electronic parts, is urging members to buy tantalum ore only from legal sources, according to trade journal Electronic Buyers News.
Tantalum is a metal used to make capacitors, tiny electronic parts that hold an electrical charge.
Most Tantalum is mined either in Africa or Australia.