Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he will personally refuse any Covid-19 vaccine, has cast doubt on the effectiveness and safety of a vaccination that will be rolled out in Brazil as the country's death toll passed 200,000 this week.
Manaus, the capital of Brazil's largest state, Amazonas, has been put under a daily 11-hour curfew as it faces a health system breakdown with oxygen shortages and thousands of deaths
Continue reading...Despite efforts to procure Covid vaccine, some nations will only vaccinate 20% of population
There are triumphant scenes as lorries leave a vaccine plant in Pune, India, loaded with boxes that will prevent thousands of deaths. Adar Poonawalla, the owner and chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, poses on the tailgate of a truck, making the most of his company’s “proud and historic” moment as the potential saviour of the nation – and even a large chunk of the world.
Poonawalla’s factory, the largest vaccine manufacturing complex in the world, is the best hope for immunisation for people in Africa and some low-income countries elsewhere – which could save them from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. The Serum Institute has been contracted to supply the UN-backed Covax initiative, which subsidises low-income countries, with 200m doses of Covid-19 vaccines with an option on 900m more.
Continue reading...Juliana Notari’s hillside sculpture sparks clash between Bolsonaro-supporting right and leftwing cultural community
A 33-metre reinforced concrete vagina has sparked a Bolsonarian backlash in Brazil, with supporters of the country’s far-right president clashing with leftwing art admirers over the installation.
The handmade sculpture, entitled Diva, was unveiled by visual artist Juliana Notari on Saturday at a rural art park on the grounds of a former sugar mill in Pernambuco, one of Brazil’s most culturally vibrant states.
Continue reading...In 2021, the world will slowly begin to fight back against Covid. But what else will change as the vaccines are administered? Here are the figures who will shape a vital year
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Continue reading...Marcelo Crivella arrested days before leaving office, in blow to Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro
Police have arrested Rio de Janeiro’s outgoing mayor Marcelo Crivella, an ally of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in an investigation into alleged corruption at city hall.
Four carloads of police and prosecutors arrived at the mayor’s house in the affluent Barra da Tijuca neighbourhood before 6am, the website of O Globo newspaper said.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro ally Marcelo Crivella accused of leading ‘well-structured and complex criminal organisation’
Rio de Janeiro’s outgoing mayor Marcelo Crivella, an ally of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been arrested and charged with corruption.
Four carloads of police and prosecutors arrived at the mayor’s house in the affluent Barra da Tijuca neighbourhood before 6am.
Continue reading...President accused of ignoring China-produced Covid vaccine because of political expediency
Jair Bolsonaro is facing a furious backlash over what critics are calling his “homicidally negligent” failure to prepare a coherent coronavirus vaccination programme as Brazil’s death toll again soars.
More than 181,000 Brazilians have died from the disease the president calls “a little flu”, with Latin America’s biggest economy now careering into a painful second wave.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro ally Marcelo Crivella lost in all of Brazilian city’s 49 constituencies
Rio de Janeiro is rejoicing after voters inflicted a humiliating electoral defeat on a widely loathed neo-Pentecostal bishop considered by some to be the worst mayor in the city’s history.
Marcelo Crivella, a gospel-singing preacher who has branded homosexuality a “terrible evil” and had shunned Rio’s annual carnival, lost in every one of the city’s 49 constituencies in Sunday’s run-off vote.
Continue reading...A landslide in Sunday’s election is predicted to sweep away the city’s ‘disastrous’ conservative leader
Tarcísio Motta is one of Rio’s best-known lefties – but when the city elects its new leader on Sunday, he’ll be voting for the right.
“We’ve got a mayor who’s an enemy of the city, and this can’t go on. It’s ludicrous,” complained the socialist councillor, one of millions of exasperated locals desperate to evict the neo-Pentecostal bishop Marcelo Crivella from city hall after what is widely regarded as a dismal four-year reign.
Continue reading...Removing far-right president is top priority for many Brazilian leftists – but can they build the united front needed to defeat him?
When glad tidings of Donald Trump’s undoing reached Flávio Dino’s 18th-century palace in north-eastern Brazil, he felt delight.
“Trump was such a toxic figure,” said the Communist party governor of Maranhão state, a leading light of the Brazilian left. “Trump’s defeat is a victory for humanity.”
Continue reading...President’s candidates suffer heavy defeats amid resurgence of mainstream parties
Jair Bolsonaro – already smarting from Donald Trump’s defeat – has suffered a further setback after candidates he had championed performed dismally in municipal elections.
Sunday’s vote provided the first electoral opportunity to gauge the health of the Brazilian president’s anti-establishment movement since the populist’s shock election victory in 2018.
Continue reading...As Biden’s victory sinks in across Brazil, Hungary and elsewhere, dreams of a rightwing global crusade appear to be fading
As the Donald Trump era draws to a close, many world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. But Trump’s ideological kindred spirits – rightwing populists in office in Brazil, Hungary, Slovenia and elsewhere – are instead taking a sharp breath.
The end of the Trump presidency may not mean the beginning of their demise, but it certainly strips them of a powerful motivational factor, and also alters the global political atmosphere, which in recent years had seemed to be slowly tilting in their favour, at least until the onset of coronavirus. The momentous US election result is further evidence that the much-talked-about “populist wave” of recent years may be subsiding.
Continue reading...Jair Bolsonaro has said Brazil needs to 'stop being a country of sissies' over the Covid pandemic. Speaking at an event where few attendees wore a mask, the Brazilian president claimed he was sorry about coronavirus-related deaths, but "all of us are going to die one day". Taking a swipe at the US president-elect, Joe Biden, who is apparently threatening Brazil with sanctions if fires in the Amazon rainforest are not dealt with, Bolsonaro said that "diplomacy is not enough [...] there must be gunpowder"
Joe Biden’s win gives the globe a better chance of averting climate catastrophe, but major obstacles remain
Environmentalists have been heartened by Joe Biden’s victory as, if the US rejoins the Paris agreement as expected, it will give the world a much better chance of averting climate catastrophe. However, there are still hurdles to overcome to rein in emissions and keep warming to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Continue reading...Campaigners say visit was ‘media propaganda’ as officials failed to stop at any devastated rainforest areas
Environmentalists have criticised a three-day tour of the Amazon that the Brazilian government staged for foreign ambassadors as a “sham” and “media propaganda” after it failed to stop at any environmentally devastated areas.
The tour ended on Friday and focused on better-protected areas of the northern Amazon. “The government prepared an itinerary that does not show the reality of the Amazon – the abandonment of indigenous peoples, the land grabbing, the illegal mining and the uncontrolled deforestation. It is a sham,” said Marcio Astrini, executive director of the Climate Observatory, an umbrella group of environmental NGOs.
Continue reading...Flávio Bolsonaro accused of siphoning off employees’ publicly funded wages
Jair Bolsonaro’s eldest son has been formally accused of embezzlement, money laundering, misappropriation of funds and directing a “criminal organisation” as sleaze allegations continue to swirl around the family of Brazil’s far-right president.
Prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro announced late on Tuesday that they had filed the charges against Flávio Bolsonaro, 39, a senator whose affairs have been under the spotlight since the eve of his father’s January 2019 inauguration.
Continue reading...Brazilian president’s stance on deforestation remains stumbling block for South America agreement
Brussels is in talks with Brazil’s far-right nationalist president, Jair Bolsonaro, over commitments on the future of the Amazon as it seeks to persuade Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders and parliaments to ratify the trade deal the bloc has negotiated with South America.
The ratification of the draft trade agreement between the EU and the “Mercosur” or Southern Common Market free-trade zone – which spans Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina – has been in doubt almost since it was announced last June.
Continue reading...Brazilian senator Chico Rodrigues is caught with notes during a search of his home
Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to portray himself as an anti-corruption crusader have suffered another blow after police reportedly seized a wad of banknotes from between the clenched buttocks of one of his allies.
Chico Rodrigues, the Brazilian president’s deputy leader in the senate, was reportedly caught with the concealed bundle on Wednesday during a police search of his home. The raid was part of an operation against the suspected misappropriation of public funds for fighting Covid-19.
Continue reading...Emergency aid payments have helped Brazil’s president win support despite the virus raging. But things could soon change
Brazil’s hard-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed Covid-19 as a “little flu”, and said it should be faced “like a man, not a boy”.
He sneered that self-isolating was “for the weak” and raged against lockdown measures. He clashed with state governors, and his own former health minister savaged his handling of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Study calls for more rights for indigenous reserves as rising gold price attracts more miners
A new report has exposed the scale and impact of mining on indigenous reserves in Amazon countries as gold prices soared during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 20% of indigenous lands are overlapped by mining concessions and illegal mining, it found, covering 450,000 sq km (174,000 sq miles) – and 31% of Amazon indigenous reserves are affected.
The report, released on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute, said indigenous people should be given more legal rights to manage and use their lands, and called for better environmental safeguards. As pressure mounts over the issue, a leading Brazilian thinktank has called for regulations tracing gold sold by financial institutions.
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