Category Archives: Jair Bolsonaro

Amazon near tipping point of switching from rainforest to savannah – study

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Climate crisis and logging is leading to shift from canopy rainforest to open grassland

Much of the Amazon could be on the verge of losing its distinct nature and switching from a closed canopy rainforest to an open savannah with far fewer trees as a result of the climate crisis, researchers have warned.

Rainforests are highly sensitive to changes in rainfall and moisture levels, and fires and prolonged droughts can result in areas losing trees and shifting to a savannah-like mix of woodland and grassland. In the Amazon, such changes were known to be possible but thought to be many decades away.

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Battle of billboards rages between Jair Bolsonaro’s foes and followers

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The arm-wrestle underscores Brazil’s bitter political rupture over a leader critics consider an abomination and supporters a corruption-busting champion

A giant image of Jair Bolsonaro stared down from billboards in the Brazilian town of Ourinhos. “We believe in God and we value the family,” its slogan proclaimed.

But within days of being erected, local dissidents had taken spray cans to the hoardings, dousing Brazil’s nationalist leader with black paint and using their graffiti to declare him a fascist.

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United Nations general assembly: China rejects Trump’s ‘baseless’ Covid accusations – live

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Follow live as Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – among others – deliver video messages

...and we have photos of Xi Jinping’s background:

Some more analysis, this time from our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, on Turkey’s talk:

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used his general assembly address to set out Turkey’s bitter objections to its exclusion from the East Mediterranean, but said he was ready to resume talks bound by international law to address their contested maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean. By his recent rhetorical standards, the speech was one of Erdoğan’s mildest.

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Brazil’s ex-president Lula condemns Bolsonaro over Covid in comeback bid

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Lula, who governed from 2003-2011, expected to run for president again at next election

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused Jair Bolsonaro of turning the coronavirus pandemic into a “weapon of mass destruction” in a high-profile intervention some have seen as the start of an attempted political comeback.

In a wide-ranging video manifesto – which allies, adversaries and analysts took as a signal Lula would seek to challenge Brazil’s far-right leader in the next presidential election – the leftist condemned Bolsonaro’s handling of a crisis that has killed more than 127,000 Brazilians.

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Amazon ‘condemned to destruction’ as fires proliferate across Brazil

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The vast rainforest is experiencing a repeat of last year’s devastating blazes and critics say Bolsonaro bears ultimate responsibility

Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”.

But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin.

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Amazon tragedy repeats itself as Brazil rainforest goes up in smoke

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The vast rainforest is experiencing a repeat of last year’s devastating fires and critics say Bolsonaro bears ultimate responsibility

Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”.

But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin.

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Bolsonaro tells journalist he would ‘like to smash their face in’ over corruption claims

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Response came after Brazil’s president was asked a question about mystery payments to his wife

The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has told a journalist he would like to “smash their face in” after being questioned over reports of a series of mystery payments into his wife’s bank account by a former police officer with alleged links to the Rio de Janeiro underworld.

Reports in the Brazilian media have claimed that between 2011 and 2017 at least 89,000 reais (about £12,000) were paid into the account of Brazil’s first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro.

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Bolsonaro ‘led Brazilian people into a canyon’, says ex-health minister

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Luiz Henrique Mandetta accuses president of playing a ‘pivotal’ role in steering economy towards catastrophe

Historians will savage Jair Bolsonaro for leading Brazilians into a deadly “canyon” with his shambling, self-interested and anti-scientific response to Covid-19, according to his former health minister.

In an interview with the Guardian, Luiz Henrique Mandetta accused the Brazilian president of playing a “pivotal” role in steering Latin America’s largest economy towards a catastrophe. Bolsonaro played politics with citizens’ lives at a time of global crisis, he said, as Brazil’s death toll rose to more than 105,000. Only the US has suffered more deaths.

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Brazil experiences worst start to Amazon fire season for 10 years

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Over 10,000 blazes seen so far in August, with response of President Bolsonaro condemned as ineffective

The Amazon has seen the worst start to the fire season in a decade, with 10,136 fires spotted in the first 10 days of August, a 17% rise on last year.

Analysis of Brazilian government figures by Greenpeace showed fires increasing by 81% in federal reserves compared with the same period last year. Coming a year after soaring Amazon fires caused an international crisis, the new figures raised fears this year’s fire season could be even worse than last year’s.

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Tesco urged to ditch meat company over alleged links to Amazon deforestation

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Responding to Greenpeace campaign to cut links to Brazilian meat giant JBS, supermarket calls on government to ensure all UK food is deforestation-free

Tesco has called on the UK government to order food companies to ensure all food sold in the UK is deforestation-free. The move comes in response to a new Greenpeace campaign calling on the supermarket to cut links to JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, over its alleged links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation.

The supermarket says the UK should introduce due diligence across supply chains to monitor for deforestation. Germany is also weighing up a due diligence law on supply chains, reportedly supported by Angela Merkel. And more than half of Britons would consider rejecting meat products linked to deforestation, a YouGov poll for Greenpeace has found.

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

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Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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How Bolsonaro downplayed Covid-19 before, and after, he contracted the virus – video

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Jair Bolsonaro has announced live on television he has tested positive for coronavirus - after months of repeatedly trivializing the pandemic and flouting social distancing guidelines.

In March, as Covid-19 claimed its first victims in Brazil, the far-right populist leader bragged that, if infected, he would quickly shake off the illness thanks to his 'athlete’s background'. Since then, the president has continued to attend social events and political rallies, often wearing masks incorrectly, if at all.

Brazil has suffered one of the world’s worst outbreaks, with more than 1.6m confirmed cases and 65,000 related deaths, according to official data released on 6 July.

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Coronavirus Brazil: president Jair Bolsonaro tests positive

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The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has announced live on television he has tested positive for coronavirus.

“It came back positive,” a mask-wearing Bolsonaro told a hand-picked group of reporters on Tuesday lunchtime outside his official residence.

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Replace or reclaim: progressive Brazil divided on fate of famous yellow shirts

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Adoption of football jersey by Jair Bolsonaro’s radical right has inspired a campaign for new colours

It is the most recognisable symbol of Brazilian identity: the iconic canary yellow jersey in which footballing giants such as Pelé and Rivaldo have helped the nation win a record five World Cups.

But the world-famous shirt has also become the emblem of President Jair Bolsonaro’s radical right, and a group of sport lovers are now demanding it be abolished and replaced with a less partisan kit.

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Brazil’s new education minister resigns amid scrutiny over qualifications

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Carlos Decotelli stepped down after five days following reports he lied about his credentials in blow to Bolsonaro

Brazil’s latest pick for education minister has been forced to resign after just five days following reports that he repeatedly lied about his qualifications, the most recent in a series of embarrassing blows for the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Carlos Decotelli, an economist and former navy man, stepped down yesterday after Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas Foundation business school publicly refuted his claims he had worked there as a teacher.

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Top Brazil newspaper in pro-democracy drive as unease grows about Bolsonaro

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Folha de São Paulo urges people who support campaign to protect country’s political future to wear yellow

One of Brazil’s leading newspapers has launched a major pro-democracy campaign as unease grows about the threat many fear Jair Bolsonaro and his most militant supporters pose to the country’s political future.

Unveiling the initiative on Sunday, the Folha de São Paulo said systematic attacks from pro-Bolsonaro extremists were putting Brazilian democracy through its greatest “stress test” since the return of civilian rule in 1985.

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Bolsonaro supporter desecrates Brazil beach memorial for 40,000 coronavirus victims

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A man vandalized a mock cemetery of 100 graves and crosses representing people who have died from Covid-19

A supporter of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has desecrated a beachside memorial to Covid-19 victims as the country’s coronavirus death toll rose above 40,000.

Activists from civil society group Rio de Paz dug 100 symbolic shallow graves on Copacabana beach before dawn on Thursday to represent the Brazilian lives lost.

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Judge orders Bolsonaro to resume publishing Brazil Covid-19 data

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Move comes amid accusations government was trying to suppress the scale of the crisis

A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to resume publishing complete Covid-19 statistics after moves to suppress such information prompted accusations of authoritarian skulduggery designed to cover up the crisis.

The Brazilian government sparked outrage on Saturday by purging the health ministry website of historical data relating to the pandemic and announcing it would stop publishing the cumulative death toll or number of infections.

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Brazil’s left and right unite to launch pro-democracy manifesto

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Call for unity comes as criticism of Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of coronavirus grows

Prominent figures from across Brazil’s political spectrum have a published a high-profile manifesto calling for a united front to protect Brazilian democracy and lives amid growing alarm over president Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian outbursts and shambolic response to coronavirus.

The Movimento Estamos Juntos (We’re In This Together Movement) was launched on Saturday as Brazil overtook France to become the country with the fourth highest official death toll. About a thousand coronavirus deaths are being confirmed each day as Latin America’s biggest economy cements itself as a major focus of the pandemic.

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