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Just a short post to say I'm deep in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, heading for the Amazon rainforest.

The plan is that next week, together with the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s economics editor Stephanie Flanders, we'll be broadcasting a series of reports on Radio 4, ´óÏó´«Ã½-1 and online, in which we'll be looking in some detail at Brazil's extraordinary emergence as a major global economic power.

Is the growth sustainable? What's the environmental cost, particularly here in the Amazon, where there are still major concerns about deforestation and the potential impact of rapidly expanding agricultural production on global climate patterns.

And what about the 50 million Brazilians who still live below the poverty line? Are they seeing any of the benefits of this economic bonanza?

What about the woman I met just outside Rio de Janeiro, whose house has been bulldozed to make way for a new highway that's being built ahead of the 2016 Olympics?

What about the shanty town dwellers who live in the shadow of Rio's prime football stadium, now being rebuilt to be ready for the 2014 World Cup?

Yesterday I met a farmer here in Mato Grosso who was the happiest farmer I've ever come across. The farmers around here are major producers of soya, which is a main ingredient in animal feed - nearly half of Brazil's soya is exported to the rapidly growing market in China. Soya prices are now at record levels; what's more, the soil and climate here are so good that farmers can get two crops a year out of the same piece of land. In between the two crops, they plant cotton (and yes, cotton prices are also at record levels), and they graze cattle before selling them on to meat processors who turn them into beef for burgers.

All being well, my reports will be on air on The World Tonight next Wednesday and Thursday, and do listen out for Stephanie Flanders's pieces as well, on Radio 4 and on ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV news.

The trumpets will sound; the drums will beat; the flags will flutter proudly. Remember those words? Of course you do: they're the words with which I started my first blogpost of 2011 - and I was writing about Sudan.

I'm writing about Sudan again today - because with just over three weeks to go until the official birth of the new nation of South Sudan (trumpets, drums, etc.), there are ominous signs of a deal unravelling and a fragile peace giving way to renewed conflict. Just last night, President Obama expressed his "deep concern" about the growing violence.

Sudan is one of the most important countries on the African continent. It's the biggest (two and a half million square kilometres, or nearly a million square miles); it has a population of around 40 million, and substantial oil reserves in which China has a major interest.

It's also the only country in the world whose head of state is an indicted war criminal. A year ago, Omar al-Bashir was charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court in connection with offences allegedly committed during the war in the western region of Darfur, in which between 200,000 and 400,000 people are estimated to have died.

Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan in the early 1990s, after he left Saudi Arabia and before he set up shop in Afghanistan. In 1998, the US launched a cruise missile attack against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory that it said was linked to al Qaeda and might have been used for the production of chemical weapons.

In other words, we ignore Sudan at our peril. The conflict in Darfur was, for a time, the focus of widespread global concern - and it's by no means impossible that it could be reignited if current tensions boil over.

The birth of the independent nation of South Sudan next month is meant to mark the end of a grim 20-year chapter of civil war between the northern and southern parts of the country. A referendum held in January saw something like 99 per cent of southerners vote for separation - but even after the votes had been counted, and after President Bashir had said he would respect the result, tensions remained.

For one thing, the exact demarcation line between the two entities hadn't been finalised. In one region, Abyei, there was meant to be a separate referendum in which its residents could decide whether they wanted to be part of the north or the south. The referendum still hasn't been held.

In another region, South Kordofan, which is on the northern side of the notional border, most people feel a greater loyalty to the south. Two days ago, the United Nartions reported that an estimated 60,000 people had fled from the region after bombing raids by the Sudanese air force.

One southern group accused Khartoum of pursuing a "genocidal campaign' in the region, and the UN was reported to have referred in a confidential document to what it called a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" by President Bashir.

So the omens aren't looking good for South Sudan's Independence Day on 9 July. At stake are vital reserves not only of oil, but also of water, on which the lives of millions of people depend. Perhaps paradoxically, it is the great misfortune of Abyei and South Kordofan to find themselves slap bang in the middle of some of the potentially most valuable Sudanese real estate.

President Bashir has shown himself over many years to be a master of saying one thing and doing another. There was a huge international sigh of relief when the independence referendum was held in January and the president responded with magnanimity.

But now, in the last few weeks before his country is formally split in two, the question is whether his actions will match his words, or whether he will seek to prevent the south seceding by returning to war.

By the way, if you've discovered the joys of Facebook and/or Twitter, you may like to know that The World Tonight now has its own presence on both. On Facebook, we have formed a group - and on Twitter we're . Happy hunting ...

Amid all the violence in Syria - well over 1,000 people feared killed, according to human rights groups, and more than 10,000 people arrested - why is so much attention being paid to a which purported to be the work of a "Gay Girl in Damascus"?

First, because for us journalists, hoaxes that we fall for are a source of deep embarrassment and a reason for some serious soul-searching.

Second, because many thousands of people wanted to believe in "Amina", the fake blogger, and it's worth asking why.

Third, because it was a real mystery, and now it's been solved - and there is a perennial fascination with mysteries.

Here are some of my thoughts. (And yes, I apologise for having been taken in by the hoax, and I apologise for having linked to the "Gay Girl" website from this blog and from Facebook and Twitter.)

There's nothing new, alas, about journalists falling for hoaxes. Forty years ago, Clifford Irving fooled everyone with a fake autobiography of the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes. In the 1980s, fake Hitler diaries were published - again, many journalists were left with egg on their faces.

What's new about the world of social media is the speed with which information can be disseminated, questioned, and, where necessary, debunked. When "Amina" was reported arrested last week, it was only hours before questions were being asked about whether she really existed. (Many people worked on establishing the truth, but the real detective work was done principally by of the US public radio network NPR, and of the website Electronic Intifada.)

Why did journalists - why did I - believe Amina was genuine? First, she wrote in what seemed to be an authentic voice. Second, she was taken seriously by people who were in a good position to judge her authenticity. Third, she was an identifiable individual who seemed to be living in the midst of one of the major international stories of our time.

Successful hoaxers, like successful confidence tricksters, tell us what we want to hear. The man who created the Gay Girl blog, a 40-year-old American Middle East activist called , insists that he did not intend to deceive - but he did, knowingly or unknowingly, feed what may well have been a journalistic longing for an authentic social media hero of the Arab Spring.

One of the reasons why so many people have been caught up in the story of the Arab uprisings may be that we like to read stories in which ordinary people, acting together, can produce real change. And if we can put a face, and a voice, to someone who symbolises that change, so much the better.

"Amina" was brave, and beautiful, and passionate. Mr MacMaster may well have missed his true calling as a writer of pulp fiction. He now he may write a novel based on the Gay Girl blog. When I linked to his (fake) story of how Amina's father supposedly faced down thuggish Syrian security men who had come to arrest his daughter, I called it "a remarkable human tale", because that is what it seemed to be.

Should I have been more sceptical? Yes. Will I be more sceptical in future? Yes again. But there are many brave people out there, and some of them are prolific bloggers and Tweeters. We should not ignore the real ones because we were fooled by a fake one.

I wonder how you confident you feel that you know what's going on in Syria. Me? I don't feel at all confident.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I always feel much happier when there are journalists whom I trust on the ground, out there with their notebooks, recorders, and cameras - reporting back to me what they can see and what they can hear.

I'm even happier if I'm there myself - but in Syria, there are no independent journalists operating because none has been allowed in. Local reporters can't work freely, because there are no free media.

And that's why we rely on social network sites likes Facebook and Twitter. Throughout my working day, my computer screen flashes constantly with a never-ending stream of updates from people in Syria and elsewhere, telling me what's going on where they are, now, this minute. It's mesmerising - but it can also be deeply misleading.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you may remember that six weeks ago I posted a link to a Syrian who called herself "A Gay Girl in Damascus". She wrote unusually vividly and movingly, especially about the day when armed men came to her home late at night to arrest her.

She described how her father stood up to the men, talked to them, lectured them, and shamed them until eventually they left without her. "As soon as the gate shut, I heard clapping; everyone in the house was awake now and had been watching from balconies and doorways and windows all around the courtyard ... and everyone was cheering ... my Dad had just defeated them! Not with weapons but with words ... and they had left ... I hugged him and kissed him. I literally owe him my life."

Then, last Monday, a woman describing herself as the blogger's cousin, wrote that Amina (the "gay girl in Damascus") had been abducted while walking in the streets of the Syrian capital. A huge internet campaign swung into action, mobilising friends and supporters to press for her release.

But here's the point. It quickly emerged that no one actually knew the blogger. No one in Damascus had actually met her, or knew anyone who had. Even her supposed girl-friend in Canada, whom we interviewed in all good faith on the programme on Tuesday, later admitted that she had neither met nor even spoken to her - their entire relationship had been conducted online, via email.

So who is Amina? Is she someone who is hiding behind a false identity, perhaps for her own security, or is she a work of fiction? Does she even exist? (The pictures of herself that she posted online turned out to be of someone else entirely.)

UPDATE: A man called Tom MacMaster has now being the author of the blog.

Does it matter if one blog among millions turns out to be a fake? Unfortunately, it does, especially in an environment where independent reporting is impossible, so that blogs and other online media become the only available substitute.

If Amina does not exist - if she isn't who she says she is, or if the events she writes about didn't happen - then we have learned an important lesson: that we must be doubly cautious when we use the information provided by bloggers and Tweeters as a basis for our reporting. (There's an excellent account of the whole mystery .)

According to human rights groups in Syria, well over 1,000 people have been killed since the current wave of unrest exploded two months ago, and more than 10,000 people are believed to have been arrested.

Yesterday, more than 2,500 people were reported to have fled across the border into Turkey to escape an expected army onslaught on the town of Jisr al-Shughour, where, according to official media, 120 people were killed last weekend in what seems to have been a partial army mutiny.

I wrote eight weeks ago: "If you want to know what's really worrying Washington as officials anxiously survey the anger sweeping through the Arab world, it's not Libya you should be focusing on. Try Syria." It was true then, and it's even truer now.

More than ever, we need accurate information about what is happening there - and more than ever, accurate information is in scarce supply.