Category Archives: Brazil

Brazil receives pushback from tech companies on ‘fake news’ bill

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Brazilian government has accused Alphabet of interference after it placed advertising on its search homepage and YouTube

Brazil’s government is taking a stand against major tech companies over a new internet regulation that is shaping up to be one of the world’s strongest legislations on social media.

Bill 2630, also known as the ‘fake news’ law, puts the onus on the internet companies, search engines and social messaging services to find and report illegal material, instead of leaving it to the courts, charging hefty fines for failures to do so.

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Brazilian police search Jair Bolsonaro mansion and arrest aide

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Police investigate suspected efforts to fake Covid-19 vaccination records in order to travel to US

Federal police have searched the mansion of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and arrested one of his closest aides as part of an investigation into suspected criminal efforts to fake Covid-19 vaccination records in order to travel to the US.

Lt Col Mauro Cid Barbosa, described by the Brazilian press as Bolsonaro’s “right-hand man”, was one of six people arrested on Wednesday morning as police raided multiple addresses in the capital, Brasília, and Rio de Janeiro.

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Brazil’s battle to reclaim Yanomami lands from illegal miners turns deadly

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Fatalities underline dangers in government efforts to evict thousands of miners who have devastated Indigenous territory

Brazil’s battle to reclaim its largest Indigenous territory from tens of thousands of illegal miners has taken a deadly turn after at least five people were reportedly killed during 36 hours of violence in the Amazon’s sprawling Yanomami territory.

The bloodshed began on Saturday afternoon when masked illegal miners allegedly launched an attack on a Yanomami village called Uxiu.

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Jair Bolsonaro questioned by police investigating Brazil coup attempt

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Former president of Brazil says he shared video ‘by mistake’ while on morphine in US hospital

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ridiculed by his political opponents after he was questioned by federal police as part of a criminal investigation into January’s alleged coup attempt and claimed he had shared a video questioning last year’s election result “by mistake”.

Bolsonaro spent more than two hours in the company of police investigators on Wednesday morning, nearly four months after thousands of hardcore supporters ran riot in the capital, Brasília, in what the new administration called a botched coup intended to reinstall the far-right former army captain as president.

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Portugal should apologise for role in slave trade, says its president

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Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa makes rare acknowledgement of centuries of forced transportation of millions of Africans

Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has said his country should apologise and take responsibility for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, the first time a leader of the southern European nation has suggested such a national apology.

From the 15th to the 19th century, 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to Brazil.

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EU firms accused of ‘abhorrent’ export of banned pesticides to Brazil

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BASF among firms selling chemicals to sugar industry despite links to human health risks

Pesticides banned in the EU because of their links to human health risks are being exported and used on farms in Brazil supplying Nestlé, an investigation has revealed.

Europe is home to some of the world’s biggest and most profitable chemical companies, including the Swiss-based Syngenta and the German multinationals BASF and Bayer.

This article was amended on 25 April 2023. Although fipronil and triflumuron have been banned in the EU they have not been identified as potential carcinogens.

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2023 Goldman environmental prize winners include Texas Gulf coast defender

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Diane Wilson took on Formosa Plastics and won a $50m settlement to help clean up decades worth of toxic plastic waste

Grassroots activists who took on British mining giants and a serial plastics polluter – and won – are among this year’s recipients of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The environmental campaigns led by the six 2023 Goldman prize winners highlight the hurdles faced by some local activists, who are often on the frontlines confronting the toxic mix of corporate greed and systemic corruption that is fuelling the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and increasingly forced displacement.

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Brazil: Lula security chief resigns after leaked footage of far-right palace riot

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Video shows Gonçalves Dias inside presidential palace as supporters of Bolsonaro went on the rampage in January

A key member of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new administration has been forced to resign after the emergence of security footage showing him inside the presidential palace during the 8 January far-right assault on Brazil’s democratic institutions.

After his election last year, president Lula made the retired army general Gonçalves Dias head of Brazil’s Institutional Security Bureau (GSI), which advises the president on defense and security matters and handles presidential security.

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Ukraine criticises Brazil’s peace efforts and invites Lula to see invasion’s effects

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Kyiv accuses Brazilian president’s initiative for giving equal weight to ‘the victim and the aggressor’

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has condemned the “violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity” by Russia and again called for mediation to end the war, as he came under fire for his previous comments on the conflict.

Speaking at a lunch on Tuesday with Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, Lula said a group of neutral nations must come together to help broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

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UK company mining gold in Amazon on disputed land

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London-listed Serabi Gold extracting gold without approval of Brazilian land registry and Indigenous communities

A London-listed company has been mining gold in the Amazon rainforest without approval from the Brazilian land agency or the consent of nearby Indigenous communities, according to an investigation by the Guardian and partners.

Serabi Gold has been blasting 4.5 metre-wide tunnels and trucking ore from the Coringa project site in Pará state. But interviews with land agency officials and documents seen by the Guardian, Unearthed and Sumaúma indicate that ownership of the area is disputed and the land was allegedly occupied by illegal land-grabbers.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin and Zelenskiy visit troops near frontline

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This blog has now closed, you can read more of out Ukraine war coverage here

You may have seen that we are testing a new feature across some of the Guardian’s live blogs, including the Ukraine live blog, which allows you to contact some of our live bloggers directly. This is for people who want to message us, they are not public comments.

If you have something you’ve seen you think I’ve missed, or you have questions or comments about the war or our coverage, or have spotted one of my regular typos or transliteration errors, please do drop me a line.

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Lavrov’s Brazil visit highlights Lula’s neutral foreign policy despite US dismay

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Brasília encounter, like Brazilian president’s recent trip to China and offer of peacemaking in Ukraine, is part of diplomatic reset

Russia’s minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov, is due to arrive in Brasília on Monday for talks with his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, in the latest of a series of bilateral encounters likely to ruffle the US.

Lavrov arrives just as Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, returns from a state visit to China, and both missions are part of a diplomatic reset Lula has pursued since returning to power this year, as he strives to recover Brazil’s international reputation after his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, dismantled Brazil’s established tradition of cooperation.

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Hyundai urged to stop illegal miners using its machines in Amazon

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Greenpeace report finds heavy machinery made by South Korean firm contributing to destruction of Brazilian rainforest

Hyundai is being urged to prevent its heavy machinery products from being used in illegal mining and environmental destruction in the Brazilian Amazon.

A report published by Greenpeace on Wednesday found the South Korean conglomerate’s excavators and other heavy machinery are precipitating the destruction of the rainforest and putting the survival of Indigenous populations at risk.

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Axe attack at Brazilian pre-school leaves four children dead and five injured

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President Lula deplores ‘act of hate and cowardice’ as police arrest 25-year-old man after killings in southern state of Santa Catarina

Four children have been killed and at least five others injured after a 25-year-old man armed with a small axe attacked a pre-school in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

A man with a hatchet jumped over a wall and invaded a daycare center on Wednesday in Brazil, killing four children and wounding at least five others, authorities said.

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Panic and emotional pain as alleged deep-cover Russian spies vanish

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Pair of suspected ‘illegals’ are thought to have been a married couple living separate lives in Brazil and Greece

Halfway through a trip to Malaysia in January, Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich stopped messaging his girlfriend back home in Rio de Janeiro and she promptly launched a frantic search for her missing partner.

A Brazilian of Austrian heritage, Campos Wittich ran a series of 3D printing companies in Rio that made, among other things, novelty resin sculptures for the Brazilian military and sausage dog key chains.

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Brazilian meat firm’s A- sustainability rating has campaigners up in arms

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Environmentalists question high grade given to JBS and accuse it of deforestation in the Amazon and under-reporting emissions

The award of an A-minus sustainability grade to the world’s biggest meat company has raised eyebrows and kicked off a debate about the rating system for environmental and social governance.

Brazilian meat company JBS has previously been linked to deforestation in the Amazon, where its slaughterhouses process beef from ranches carved out of the Amazon, Cerrado and other biomes. But in the latest Climate Change Report by the influential rating organisation CDP, the multinational got a grade of A- for its efforts to tackle climate change – up from B in the previous assessment – and was given a “leadership” status award.

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Diehard Bolsonaro fans greet far-right ex-president on return to Brazil

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Son says Jair Bolsonaro will lead opposition after return from self-imposed exile in US

Three months after he left Brazil to avoid passing the presidential sash to his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president Jair Bolsonaro has flown back to the South American country hoping to prove his political career is far from over.

The far-right radical flew to the US on the eve of Lula’s 1 January inauguration and watched the historic transition of power from a rented villa near Disney World in Florida. It was from Florida, too, that Bolsonaro watched the 8 January assault on Brazil’s democratic institutions perpetrated by hardcore supporters seemingly bent on overthrowing Lula’s new government.

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Brazil may sue VW amid claims firm used ‘slave labour’ under military rule

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Prosecutors seek compensation for workers kept on cattle ranch owned by German carmaker during dictatorship from 1973 to 1987

Brazil is threatening to take the German carmaker Volkswagen to court over allegations that it used slave labour on a vast ranch in the Amazon, after talks on compensating workers ended without agreement.

Public prosecutors in Brazil are seeking compensation for men who they say were forced to work in “humiliating and degrading” conditions, with no clean water or sanitation, on the Fazenda Vale do Rio Cristalino cattle ranch, which was owned by the company in the northern Pará state, between 1973 and 1987.

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US indicts alleged Russian spy who tried to infiltrate ICC in The Hague

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Sergey Cherkasov studied in US under false identity and is accused of working for Russian intelligence

US authorities have released new details about an alleged Russian spy who attempted to penetrate the international criminal court in The Hague, using a false identity developed over a decade.

An indictment made public on Saturday accuses Sergey Cherkasov, who US intelligence believes is an elite “illegal” operative of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Cherkasov posed as Brazilian citizen Victor Muller Ferreira over many years.

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Families of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira decry ‘shameful’ trial delays

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Poor internet and logistical problems frustrate hearing into killing of British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert

Activists and lawyers representing the families of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have voiced frustration and anger after the preliminary court hearings of three of their alleged murderers had to be suspended because of poor internet and logistical problems at the high-security prisons where the defendants are being held.

Three of the suspected killers of the British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous specialist were scheduled to give evidence from behind bars this week during partly online hearings that are expected to pave the way for a jury trial, possibly in the second half of this year.

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