Author of Um defeito de cor wins seat in 128-year-old institution long dominated by white men
Brazil has elected its first Black woman to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, founded in 1897 and modelled on the Académie Française.
Ana Maria Gonçalves, 54, is one of Brazil’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, and her election on Thursday is being widely celebrated by writers, activists, literary scholars and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Continue reading...Latest threats heighten fears that the president’s erratic trade strategy risks exacerbating inflation across the US
Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his administration will hit Brazil with a 50% tariff on products sent to the US, tying the move to what he called the “witch-hunt” trial against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Posting letters on Truth Social, the US president had earlier in the day targeted seven other countries – the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka – for stiff US tariffs on foreign exports starting on 1 August.
Continue reading...President Lula rejects foreign ‘interference’ as Trump claims far-right former leader victim of ‘witch-hunt’
Donald Trump has issued his strongest defence to date of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, claiming the far-right leader is the victim of a “witch-hunt” in his home country.
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social on Monday, the US president claimed that Bolsonaro – often dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics” – is “not guilty of anything”, in an apparent reference to the legal cases Bolsonaro is facing in Brazil.
Continue reading...Kayapó chief tells in memoir of seeing former president in his dreams and of warning Lula not to repeat past mistakes
Brazil’s most revered Indigenous leader, Raoni Metuktire, has said he believes that one of the former president Jair Bolsonaro’s goals while in office was to “exterminate” the country’s Indigenous peoples.
According to the Kayapó chief, the far-right populist “encouraged invasions, mining and deforestation” in order to hand Indigenous lands over to the kubẽ (non-Indigenous people).
Continue reading...Brazilian president meets Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at her flat in Buenos Aires after regional summit
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has eschewed a one-on-one meeting with the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, during a trip to Buenos Aires, instead opting to visit Milei’s political rival, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is under house arrest.
Lula was in the Argentinian capital on Thursday to attend the Mercosur summit.
Continue reading...Key takeaways from two weeks of negotiations aimed at setting out stall for November’s Cop30 in Brazil
Two weeks of negotiations on the climate crisis have just concluded in Bonn in preparation for the Cop30 summit taking place in Brazil this November. What did we learn?
Continue reading...Witnesses say some of those onboard hurled themselves out to escape flames as reports say fire started from torch in balloon’s basket
At least eight people have died after a hot-air balloon carrying more than 20 people caught fire and plunged through the sky in Brazil’s deep south.
Footage posted on social media showed the moment the multi-coloured aircraft fell to earth, engulfed in flames, in the state of Santa Catarina on Saturday morning. At least two of the balloon’s occupants can be seen plummeting to the ground as the fire spreads. “My God!” one witness can be heard gasping as the basket hurtles towards the ground.
Continue reading...Opponents view the controversial act as part of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict abortion access
A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”
Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.
Continue reading...Former president has denied wrongdoing as federal police accuse him of overseeing a spy network targeting rivals
Federal police have formally accused Brazil’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, of presiding over an illegal spying network which allegedly snooped on political rivals, journalists and environmentalists during his administration.
Bolsonaro is already facing the prospect of jail time over his alleged role in masterminding a military coup plot designed to help him keep power after losing the 2022 election to the leftwing veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There is broad consensus among analysts that Bolsonaro’s conviction is a foregone conclusion and the 70-year-old populist is expected to face arrest in the coming months once a supreme court trial concludes.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Lidiane Vieira Frazão, a black woman from Rio, was repeatedly denied appropriate treatment as President Bolsonaro downplayed the pandemic, lawsuit says
In the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lidiane Vieira Frazão, 35, was expecting her second child but, even at 40 weeks pregnant, she was unable to obtain a doctor’s note to start her maternity leave.
Her job as a funeral agent – at times handling the bodies of people who had died from the virus – was on the long list of “essential services” that could not be suspended during lockdown, according to a decree issued by Brazil’s then-president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...Sale covering 56,000 square miles set to go ahead despite opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups
The Brazilian government is preparing to stage an oil exploration auction months before it hosts the Cop30 UN climate summit, despite opposition from environmental campaigners and Indigenous communities worried about the environmental and climate impacts of the plans.
Brazil’s oil sector regulator, ANP, will auction the exploration rights to 172 oil and gas blocks spanning 56,000 square miles (146,000 sq km), an area more than twice the size of Scotland, most of it offshore.
Continue reading...New study shows regions with best potential to regrow trees and suck climate-heating CO2 from the air
New maps have revealed the best “win-win” opportunities across the world to regrow forests and tackle the climate crisis, without harming people or wildlife.
The places range from the eastern US and western Canada, to Brazil and Columbia, and across Europe, adding up to 195 million hectares (482 million acres). If reforested, this would remove 2.2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, about the same as all the nations in the European Union.
Continue reading...Ex-Brazilian president admits in court that after Lula’s win, ‘we studied other alternatives within the constitution’
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has denied masterminding a far-right coup plot at his trial in the supreme court, but he admitted to taking part in meetings to discuss “alternative ways” of staying in power after his defeat in the 2022 election.
In just over two hours of questioning, the 70-year-old said that after the electoral court confirmed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s election victory, “we studied other alternatives within the constitution.”
Continue reading...Rightwinger accused of conspiring against democracy says appearance before supreme court will be ‘worth watching’
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, will finally find himself in the dock this week, accused of masterminding an armed far-right conspiracy to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election.
The 70-year-old paratrooper turned populist, who governed from 2019 until 2023, is scheduled to be interrogated by the supreme court as it seeks to untangle what federal police claim was a sprawling three-year plot to vandalize one of the world’s largest democracies.
Continue reading...Census finds just 56.7% in world’s biggest Catholic country follow Roman church as evangelical numbers rise
Home to the world’s largest Catholic population, Brazil has once again witnessed a decline in the faith’s following, according to new figures released by the country’s national statistics institute (IBGE).
Thirty years ago, Catholics made up 82.9% of Brazil’s population but now account for just over half, 56.7%, according to the 2022 census – whose results on religion were only released on Friday.
Continue reading...Artists and legal experts are outraged over MC Poze do Rodo’s detention over supposed non-violent offences
The arrest of a well-known Brazilian funk singer on charges of allegedly inciting crime in his lyrics and an alleged connection to a major criminal gang has sparked outrage among artists, intellectuals and legal experts.
MC Poze do Rodo, 26, who has 5.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify, was arrested early on Thursday at his home in a luxury condominium in Rio de Janeiro’s west zone.
Continue reading...Exclusive: André Corrêa do Lago says ‘answers have to come from the economy’ as climate policies trigger populist-fuelled backlash
The world is facing a new form of climate denial – not the dismissal of climate science, but a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganised to fight the crisis, the president of global climate talks has warned.
André Corrêa do Lago, the veteran Brazilian diplomat who will direct this year’s UN summit, Cop30, believes his biggest job will be to counter the attempt from some vested interests to prevent climate policies aimed at shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing.
Continue reading...Friends and colleagues of Phillips, killed in the Amazon in 2022, completed his book, which coincides with launch of investigative Guardian podcast
Three years after the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira were murdered in the Amazon, two major new projects will celebrate their lives and work – and the Indigenous communities and rainforests both men sought to protect.
Friends of Phillips have completed the book he was writing at the time of his death – How to Save the Amazon – which will be published in the UK, the US and Brazil on 27 May.
Continue reading...Brazilian photographer’s work highlighted injustice and introduced rainforest to the world
The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who is best known for his dramatic black-and-white photographs that highlighted injustice and introduced the Amazon rainforest the world, has died. He was 81.
His death was confirmed by the Instituto Terra, the environmental restoration non-profit he founded with his wife of six decades, Lélia Wanick Salgado. In a post on Instagram, the institute described Salgado as “much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time”.
Continue reading...Defamation suit claims Marubo people were depicted as tech-addled and porn-obsessed after introduction of internet
An Indigenous tribe from the Brazilian Amazon has sued the New York Times, saying the newspaper’s reporting on the tribe’s first exposure to the internet led to its members being widely portrayed as technology-addled and addicted to pornography.
The Marubo tribe of the remote Javari valley, a community of about 2,000 people, filed the defamation lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages this week in a court in Los Angeles.
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