Summit leaders have reshoot in Rio after Biden, Justin Trudeau and Giorgia Meloni were no-shows the day before
The first time G20 leaders took their photo together at a summit in Rio, they forgot Joe Biden. On Tuesday, they had a reshoot – with the outgoing US president firmly back in the frame.
Biden; the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau; and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni all missed the photo on Monday due to what US officials called “logistical issues”.
Continue reading...Prime minister wants bilateral at G20 to lead to closer ties with China, which he sees as key to faster growth
Keir Starmer will become the first UK prime minister in six years to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, promising to turn the page on UK-China relations by building “a pragmatic and serious relationship”.
Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been pursuing a thawing of relations with the world’s second-largest economy on pragmatic grounds, suggesting that the UK cannot achieve its growth ambitions without better terms with China.
Continue reading...Thousands of schoolchildren in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas miss classes and risk violence as Brazil’s police battle drug gangs
Textbooks and marker pens are not all that science teacher Roberto Brandão, 54, takes with him each morning when he sets off for work in a school in one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas. He also carries a first-aid kit in case he or any of his students is hit by a bullet.
“I always have it in my backpack because I could be shot at any time,” he said, displaying the red waterproof bag after attending a seminar on how police operations are affecting children’s learning in Maré.
Continue reading...Bible-bashing drug boss accused of targeting Afro-Brazilian religions and Catholic congregations
Reports that a powerful Rio drug lord known for his extremist religious beliefs ordered Catholic churches near his stronghold to close have spooked worshipers and security experts and exposed the advent of a “narco-pentecostal” movement made up of heavily armed evangelical drug traffickers.
Claims emerged in the Brazilian press over the weekend that Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa – a notorious gang boss known as Peixão (Big Fish) – had determined that three places of worship should shut down in and around the agglomeration of favelas that he controls in northern Rio.
Continue reading...Supporters of rightwing ex-president Jair Bolsonaro among 1.6m people at show despite conservative criticism of ‘satanist’ singer
For conservative supporters of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, Madonna’s recent mega show in Rio had seemed the perfect opportunity to score points against what they see as the ungodly and morally degenerate left.
After the Queen of Pop threw the biggest concert of her 40-year career on Copacabana beach on Saturday, one far-right congressman called the singer a “satanist”. Another reprehended the “immoral acts” that had unfolded on stage during the sexually charged event and called Madonna’s performance “an affront to Brazilian laws”.
Continue reading...Area around Rio de Janeiro beach filled for several blocks as singer closes her Celebration world tour
With the world-famous statue towering over it from Corcovado mountain, Rio de Janeiro is well used to Christ the Redeemer. For one night only this weekend, it also had Madonna.
More than a million people thronged Copacabana beach on Saturday night, turning its vast stretch of sand into a massive dancefloor for a free concert by the pop star as she completed her world tour.
Continue reading...In the 1800s, Luiz Gama defied fate to become Brazil’s first Black lawyer. Nearly a century and a half later, Portela’s parade puts his struggle center stage
Born in 1830 to a trafficked African woman who escaped enslavement and led uprisings, Luiz Gama defied fate and the Brazilian empire to become the country’s first Black lawyer and a leading abolitionist.
When he was 10 his father, a Portuguese nobleman, illegally sold him into slavery to pay off gambling debts. Gama regained his freedom as a young adult and having learnt to read, became a writer, intellectual and self-taught lawyer. He founded newspapers defending abolition and used the law to help free more than 500 enslaved people before Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888, six years after he died.
Continue reading...Feira de Acari is closed down by the mayor after claims that gangsters used it to sell stolen goods
Manoel Ribeiro has never known a world without Rio de Janeiro’s best-known flea market, the Feira de Acari.
The swarming suburban bazaar was founded outside his home in 1970, the year of his birth. It existed in 1993 when the market trader was shot nearby during an armed robbery and lost the use of his legs.
Continue reading...Ana Clara Benevides, 23, died hours after the singer’s 17 November show – a day when temperatures hit 40C
Heat exhaustion caused the death of a Brazilian fan who attended a Taylor Swift concert in November, according to a forensics report obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Ana Clara Benevides, 23, passed out during Swift’s second song at the show in Rio de Janeiro on 17 November and died hours later at a local hospital. Temperatures in the city that day were at about 40C (105F).
Continue reading...Singer says safety comes first after death of Ana Clara Benevides Machado, 23, in sweltering stadium
Taylor Swift’s concert in Brazil on Saturday night has been postponed after a fan died shortly before the start of her gig in Rio de Janeiro on Friday.
The show’s organisers, Time4Fun (T4F), said in a statement that paramedics had attended to Ana Clara Benevides Machado, 23, at the concert venue and taken her to a hospital, where she died an hour later.
Continue reading...Exhibition puts music previously shunned by elites as ‘stuff of outlaws’ in long tradition of black culture and resistance
Hebert Amorim was eight when he got his first taste of funk carioca (Rio funk): a pirate CD by Mr Catra, a favela MC famed for his ferociously explicit verses about gangs, guns and sex.
“My mum caught me listening to it and went mental,” said the 30-year-old visual artist from Senador Camará, a hardscrabble corner of west Rio de Janeiro where police fear to tread.
Continue reading...Thiago Menezes Flausino, who dreamed of becoming a footballer, was the ninth child to die in a shooting this year in Rio
Those who knew Thiago Menezes Flausino described him as a boy with dreams. These were brutally shattered by several police bullets this week, when the 13-year-old became one of the latest victims of state violence in a Rio de Janeiro favela.
“He dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. He’d passed tryouts for a bigger team and was going to start playing on the day he was killed,” said his aunt Nataly Bezerra Flausino, standing outside the evangelical church where her nephew’s funeral was being held on Tuesday, mere months after his baptism.
Continue reading...Ten people were killed in Rio favela and 19 people reportedly died in state of Bahia, while death toll rose to 16 in São Paulo region
At least 45 people have been killed in a string of police operations across three Brazilian states, in a particularly bloody week even for Brazil – a country notorious for its police violence.
Ten people were killed during an operation by civil and military police against drug traffickers into the Complexo da Penha favela in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday morning, with residents saying that heavy gunfire began at 3am.
Continue reading...The largest refuge for Indigenous tribes living in isolation is also a hotspot for poachers and illegal loggers and a major smuggling route for cocaine traffickers
In Brazil’s far west lies an immense swath of rainforest and rugged terrain reachable only by snaking brown rivers. Wedged alongside the border with Peru, the Javari valley is nearly the size of Portugal, and is the largest refuge for Indigenous tribes living in isolation from the outside world.
“The Javari is one of the last true bastions of primal wilderness in the Amazon – and in the world,” said Scott Wallace, author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes.
Continue reading...Samba schools will return to action but ‘blocos’ – street groups – are furious they have not yet received authorization to gather
Some of Rio’s most cherished street carnival groups say they are fighting for the right to party ahead of the city’s first official celebrations since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Rio’s world-famous samba schools will return to action next week for their first parades at the Sambódromo stadium in more than two years. But the carnival enthusiasts behind hundreds of “blocos” – riotous musical troupes that roam the streets clutching brass instruments and booze – are furious they have not received authorization to gather.
Continue reading...Outcry as club that is symbol of black resistance finds itself at the centre of politically charged squabble over Bolsonaro’s far-right government
The beer-soaked samba session was drawing to a close and, as usual, the crowd was preparing to vent its spleen.
As percussionists from one of Rio’s top samba groups hammered their tamborins and tantãs, revelers raised their glasses and let out loud, cathartic cheers demanding the removal of a president they despise. “Fora Bolsonaro!” jeered the sweat-drenched throng. “Bolsonaro out!”
Continue reading...State governor says surprise operation against drug gangs and mafia groups is start of ‘transformational’ occupation
Hundreds of heavily armed police have stormed one of Rio’s largest favelas at the start of what authorities claimed was a “transformational” attempt to wrest back control from the drug gangs and paramilitary mafias which dominate huge swaths of the Brazilian city.
The operation began at daybreak on Wednesday as security forces in camouflage gear and armoured personnel carriers swept into Jacarezinho, a bustling redbrick community that has been a stronghold of the Red Command drug faction since the 1980s.
Continue reading...France reports 335,000 new Covid cases as Italy, Portugal, Netherlands and Turkey all see record cases
India is reporting 58,097 new Covid cases, twice the number seen only four days ago, according to health ministry data.
Wednesday’s figure takes the cumulative total to more than 35 million.
Continue reading...Carlos Arthur Nuzman, the head of the Brazilian Olympic Committee for more than two decades, has been sentenced to 30 years and 11 months in jail for allegedly buying votes for Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympics. The ruling by Judge Marcelo Bretas became public on Thursday.
Nuzman, who also headed the Rio 2016 organising committee, was found guilty of corruption, criminal organisation, money laundering and tax evasion. The 79-year-old will not be jailed until all his appeals are heard. He and his lawyer did not comment on the decision.
Continue reading...Artists in the favela are starting to compete again after the Covid-19 pandemic curtailed public gatherings, a show that signals a return to normality for music lovers
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