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...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...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...Legendary sambista Moacyr Luz spent much of the pandemic confined to his beachside home but is resuming his weekly jam sessions as lockdown curbs ease
It has been seven months since Moacyr Luz, one of Brazil’s most celebrated sambistas, sat down before a live audience in the city his songs serenade.
As Covid-19 shook Luz’s homeland, killing more than 150,000 and infecting millions, it also wreaked havoc on Rio’s signature sound, with all shows scrapped, carnival postponed until a vaccine is found and several cherished samba proponents among the dead.
Continue reading...Covid-19 quarantine has not stopped police from storming favelas, with 13 killed in the latest operation
Maria Diva do Nascimento was worried as she set off for her job at one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest hospitals wearing a face mask she hoped would keep her alive.
It had been two days since she had heard from her son Allyson, a 20-year-old drug trafficker whose job made social isolation impossible.
Continue reading...The coronavirus was probably brought to Brazil by rich returning holidaymakers but it is threatening to explode in marginal communities
In many ways, Washington Castro was a typical resident of Rocinha, the immense redbrick favela that towers over Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic coast.
Industrious, God-fearing and the offspring of migrants from Brazil’s parched and impoverished north-east, he supported two young children by working two separate jobs and wore a suit and tie when attending his local church.
Continue reading...Far-right president deemed ‘deplorable’ for flouting social distancing rules again – while coughing repeatedly – to bolster protests amid coronavirus
Former presidents, politicians and newspaper editorial boards have lined up to denounce the “moronic” and “anti-democratic” behaviour of Brazil’s far-right leader after he hit the streets to egg on protesters demanding a return to military dictatorship.
As the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 rose to nearly 2,500 on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro left his presidential palace in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, to fraternize with flag-waving radicals.
Continue reading...The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro was lit up for Easter on Sunday night, paying tribute to health workers in Brazil and across the world tackling the coronavirus crisis. Images of health workers asking people to remain at home and flags from different countries with the word 'Hope' were also projected during the event
Continue reading...Researchers believe the calf was born in January and a second may be on its way
Hopes for a recovery of Brazil’s most endangered ecosystem have been given a boost by the first birth of a wild tapir in Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic Forest for more than a century.
Scientists said video clips of the baby tapir proved the initial success of a re-introduction strategy for the threatened mammal, which is often described as “a forest gardener” because it plays a vital role in the dispersal of seeds.
Continue reading...The group played a key role in the election of the country’s far-right president and have become increasingly assertive
With drummers pounding out samba rhythms through the rain, this might almost have been just another one of the hundreds of street parties of Rio’s world-famous carnival.
But nobody at the I’m Full of Love Samba Street Party on Copacabana Beach was drunk or in costume, few bystanders were dancing – and the group on the sound truck was singing about Jesus.
Continue reading...Brazil’s famed carnival kicked off in earnest on Saturday as millions of revellers poured into the streets, some of whom took aim at the nation’s deeply polarised politics. Most partiers, though, were dressed in distinctly apolitical garb, ranging from mermaid to cowboy costumes, suggesting that during carnival, Brazilians are focused on revelry first, and politics second
Such is the reputation of the Paraíso de Tuiuti samba school in Rio de Janeiro that dancers travel from as far afield as the UK, Russia and Japan to train in the ways of hip-swivelling and hot-stepping. During Rio’s world-famous carnival, members of the school will dance in front of 70,000 spectators and tens of millions of television viewers
Continue reading...Instagram post about being robbed in the city is accidentally shared by tourist agency
When marketing Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s national tourism agency typically focuses on the city’s world-class beaches, samba-filled music scene and caipirinha-fueled parties.
Violent crime is rarely listed among the attractions.
Continue reading...Storms have submerged entire neighborhoods and sent homes tumbling down hillsides, causing more than 30,000 to flee
More than 30,000 people have been displaced by heavy rains in south-east Brazil that have killed 54 people and left 18 missing.
The storms have caused floods and landslides, submerging entire neighborhoods and sending homes tumbling down hillsides in the states of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro. Rains subsided by Monday, but were expected to resume later this week in some areas.
Continue reading...Hundreds protest over favela killing of Ágatha Félix, eight, allegedly shot in back by police
The photograph shows a smiling eight-year-old girl dressed as Wonder Woman, beaming through gap teeth and crossing her small clenched fists into an X. Shocked Brazilians shared the image of Ágatha Félix online after she was shot in the back in a Rio de Janeiro favela on Friday night by what residents said was a bullet from a police officer’s rifle. She later died in hospital.
She was the fifth young child to be killed in Rio favelas this year. Favela activists, politicians, the public defenders’ office and the president of Rio’s bar association blamed the shoot-to-kill policy of the Rio governor, Wilson Witzel. “He is responsible for the murder,” tweeted Guilherme Boulos, a leftist politician.
Continue reading...Rio de Janeiro police have killed a record number of people in the name of Wilson Witzel’s war on drugs, and many say it’s civilian lives being lost
Night has fallen on Rio de Janeiro’s Albert Schweitzer hospital, and in its 11th-floor intensive care unit Enzo Coutinho dozes in his aunt’s lap.
“Sometimes it takes a mountain to trust and believe in you,” Merielle Ventura, a 24-year-old nursery teacher, sings gently into her nephew’s ear.
Continue reading...Rio tabloids mock Clauvino da Silva’s botched escape, which also left his daughter, 19, inside
When Mexico’s “Shorty” – the drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – made his cinematic 2015 jail-break it required a mile-long tunnel, a multimillion dollar bribe and even a private plane that whisked him to freedom in the mountains of Sinaloa.
El Chapo’s Brazilian namesake hoped to achieve the same using just a silicone mask, a black bra and wig, and a skin-tight T-shirt emblazoned with three pink doughnuts.
Continue reading...A Brazilian inmate has been caught trying to escape from prison by pretending to be his teenage daughter when she visited him behind bars. Gang leader Clauvino da Silva, also known as 'Shorty', tried to leave the prison in Rio de Janeiro dressed in her clothes and wearing a silicon girl's mask and long dark-haired wig, but his nervousness gave him away, prison officials said. His plan was apparently to leave his 19-year-old daughter inside the jail. Officials released a video in which da Silva can be seen removing the mask and some of the clothes
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