Category Archives: Brazil

Bolsonaro threatens to identify officials who approved Covid jabs for children

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Brazilian president plans to reveal identities despite health officers receiving death threats

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has asked for the names of health officials who approved Covid vaccines for children, saying he planned to make their identities public despite previous death threats.

In late October, Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa, released a statement saying five of its directors had received death threats over the possible approval of vaccinations for children of five-11. The agency granted such approval for the Pfizer shot on Thursday.

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Books that explain the world: Guardian writers share their best nonfiction reads of the year

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From a Jacobean traveller’s travails in Sindh to the tangled roots of Nigeria, our pick of new nonfiction books that shine a light on Asia, Africa and South America

• Share your top recommendations for books on the developing world in the comments below

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021
By Alaa Abd El-Fattah

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Missing Rio boys tortured and killed for stealing bird, say police

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Members of Red Command drug faction accused of crime that caused outcry across Brazil

Nearly a year after three young boys vanished near their homes in Rio de Janeiro’s rundown northern sprawl, police have accused members of the city’s largest drug faction of murdering the children in reprisal for stealing an ornamental bird.

The boys – aged nine, 11 and 12 – disappeared on the afternoon of 27 December 2020 after leaving their homes in the Morro do Castelar favela to play. They were last seen in eerie security footage showing them walking towards a local street market.

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‘His struggle is ours’: biopic of slain 60s rebel hailed in Brazil with anti-Bolsonaro chants

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Film about Carlos Marighella, released in Berlin in 2019, only arrived in Brazil last month after government cancellations

The CIA considered him Che Guevara’s successor when it came to igniting new guerrilla movements in Latin America.

Brazil’s military dictatorship, whose security agents ambushed and killed him in São Paulo in 1969, called him public enemy No 1.

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Anger as Jair Bolsonaro to allow unvaccinated visitors into Brazil

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There are fears the decision will reverse the gains made by a successful vaccination campaign

The Brazilian government has been accused of seeking to turn the South American country into a haven for unvaccinated tourists after it shunned calls – including from its own health regulator – to demand proof of vaccination from visitors.

The decision – announced on Tuesday by the health minister, Marcelo Queiroga – sparked anger in a nation that has lost more than 615,000 lives to a Covid outbreak the president, Jair Bolsonaro, stands accused of catastrophically mishandling.

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Rio Olympics chief sentenced to 30 years in prison for buying 2016 votes

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  • Ruling against Carlos Arthur Nuzman becomes public
  • Court heard Lamine and Papa Diack were bribed for votes

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.

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‘Un grand monsieur’: Lula challenge to Bolsonaro finds welcome in Europe

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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gets a fist bump from Olaf Scholz and an invitation to the presidential palace from Macron

It was a welcome fit for a president.

Republican Guards at the Élysée Palace. A standing ovation at the European Parliament. A front-page interview in Spain’s top newspaper in which the visiting dignitary was hailed as a “cyclone” of energy.

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‘It’s as if we’re in Mad Max’: warnings for Amazon as goldmining dredges occupy river

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Hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges converge in search of metal as one activists describes it as a ‘free-for-all’

Environmentalists are demanding urgent action to halt an aquatic gold rush along one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries, where hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges have converged in search of the precious metal.

The vast flotilla – so large one local website compared it to a floating neighbourhood – reportedly began forming on the Madeira River earlier this month after rumours that a large gold deposit had been found in the vicinity.

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Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds

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Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups

Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.

The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.

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Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon at highest level since 2006

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Increase comes despite Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to show his government is taking environmental preservation seriously

Deforestation in Brazil‘s Amazon rainforest soared 22% in the past year to the highest level since 2006, the government’s annual report has shown, undercutting president Jair Bolsonaro’s assurances that the country is curbing illegal logging.

Brazil‘s space research agency, INPE, recorded 13,235sq km (5,110 square miles) of deforestation in the world’s largest rainforest in satellite data, the report showed on Thursday, an area nearly 17 times the size of New York City. The official deforestation data covers a period from August 2020 through to July 2021.

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Revealed: the places humanity must not destroy to avoid climate chaos

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Tiny proportion of world’s land surface hosts carbon-rich forests and peatlands that would not recover before 2050 if lost

Detailed new mapping has pinpointed the carbon-rich forests and peatlands that humanity cannot afford to destroy if climate catastrophe is to be avoided.

The vast forests and peatlands of Russia, Canada and the US are vital, researchers found, as are tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia. Peat bogs in the UK and mangrove swamps and eucalyptus forests in Australia are also on the list.

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‘I thought I’d never hear applause again’: Brazilian sambistas rejoice at the return of music

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Renowned singer Zeca Pagodinho is back performing after Covid-stricken nation carries out one of world’s largest vaccination drives

“If I want to smoke, I’ll smoke. If I want to drink, I’ll drink,” the legendary Brazilian singer Zeca Pagodinho proclaims in one of his best-known sambas.

Coronavirus robbed Zeca of an even greater pleasure: performing the songs that have made him one of Brazil’s most successful and universally adored stars.

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Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will ‘legalise deforestation’ say critics

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The beef industry hopes a planned deforestation-free farming zone will tempt buyers back but many fear it will drive up illegal tree felling

For many, the overriding image of agriculture in the Amazon is one of environmental destruction. About 80% of deforestation in the region has been attributed to cattle ranching, tainting beef exports.

Brazil’s beef industry hopes to tempt buyers back to the Amazon region, which covers about 40% of the country’s total area, with a new deforestation-free pledge. But critics are concerned it could effectively legalise deforestation in the region.

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Transform approach to Amazon or it will not survive, warns major report

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Panel of 200 scientists tells Cop26 Indigenous people, business, governments and scientists must collaborate

The world’s approach to the Amazon rainforest must be transformed to avoid an irreversible, catastrophic tipping point, according to the most comprehensive study of the region ever carried out.

More than 200 scientists collaborated on the new report, which finds that more than a third of the world’s biggest tropical forest is degraded or deforested, rainfall is declining and dry seasons are growing longer.

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Newly translated letters offer indigenous take of Brazil’s bloody birth

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Dutch-Portuguese war of 1645 split the Potiguara people but their leaders’ correspondence across battle lines has finally been translated from Tupi

In 1645, a bloody war raged between Dutch settlers and the Portuguese empire over the sugar plantations of north-east Brazil.

Trapped on either side of the conflict were the Potiguara, a powerful indigenous nation whose leaders penned a series of letters in the Tupi language, enticing their relatives to defect across enemy lines.

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Armed attack on Brazilian Amazon community while delegate at Cop26

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Witnesses say tents in forest in disputed area of Pará state set alight and residents beaten

A land defender from Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, said armed men attacked a forest community she defends while she was at the Cop26 talks in Glasgow.

Claudelice Silva dos Santos, a Cop26 delegate and nominee for the 2019 Sakharov prize, said she had received a phone call sounding the alarm after about 30 pickup trucks arrived at the São Vinicius camp at the Tinelli farm in Nova Ixipuna, home to about 80 families, at about 3pm local time on 3 November.

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7 Prisoners review – a powerful tale of slavery in modern-day São Paulo

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An impoverished teen seeks to escape the clutches of a human trafficker in Alexandre Moratto’s complex drama

Brazilian director Alexandre Moratto’s follow-up to his award-winning debut Socrates, 7 Prisoners delves into the subject of modern slavery through the eyes of 18-year-old Mateus (Christian Malheiros, excellent). In order to support his family, Mateus takes a job in the city, but finds himself imprisoned and working off a seemingly endless debt to his employer (Rodrigo Santoro). His initial reaction is desperation and anger, but Mateus is smart and negotiates with his captor on behalf of his fellow workers. The rather on-the-nose storytelling grows increasingly complex and interesting the further that the protagonist ventures into morally ambiguous territory.

In cinemas and on Netflix from 11 November

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Marília Mendonça: remembering her life and career – video obituary

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Marília Mendonça, one of Brazil’s biggest singers and a Latin Grammy winner, has been killed in a plane crash on her way to a concert. Her press office said their plane crashed between Mendonça’s home town of Goiânia and Caratinga, a small city 220 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. The aircraft was around seven miles from Caratinga, her destination for that evening’s gig.

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