Category Archives: Brazil

Amazon deforestation ‘at highest level in a decade’

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Almost 10,000 sq kms lost in year to August, according to Brazilian government data

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, according to new government data which highlights the impact the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has made on the world’s biggest rainforest.

The new numbers, showing almost 10,000 sq kms were lost in the year to August, were released as emboldened farm owners scuffled with forest defenders in Altamira, the Amazonian city at the heart of the recent devastation.

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Freed Brazilian ex-president Lula speaks to jubilant supporters

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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told a crowd of thousands that he did not have a ‘thirst for revenge’

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has addressed thousands of jubilant supporters outside a union headquarters a day after being released from prison.

Dressed in a black blazer and T-shirt, Lula spoke from a stage outside the union near São Paulo that he once led and that served as the base for his political career. “During 580 days, I prepared myself spiritually, prepared myself to not have hatred, to not have thirst for revenge,” he said on Saturday.

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Supporters cheer Brazil’s former president Lula as he is freed from jail – video

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Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was greeted by overjoyed supporters as he was released from prison, where he was serving a 12-year corruption sentence, after a supreme court ruling.

Lula was greeted on Friday by supporters wearing T-shirts emblazoned with his face and waving red flags outside the federal police HQ in the city of Curitiba, where he had been imprisoned for 580 days.

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Brazil’s former president Lula walks free from prison after supreme court ruling

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  • Workers’ party leader had been held for 580 days for corruption
  • Court rules incarceration unlawful until appeals exhausted

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been released from prison where he was serving a 12-year corruption sentence, after a supreme court ruling that delighted his supporters and infuriated followers of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

He was greeted by hundreds of supporters wearing red vests emblazoned with his face outside the federal police headquarters in the city of Curitiba, where he has been imprisoned for 580 days.

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Poorly planned Amazon dam project ‘poses serious threat to life’

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Operator faces choice of weakening 14km barrier or potentially devastating a biodiversity hotspot

The biggest hydroelectric project in the Amazon rainforest has a design flaw that poses a “very serious” threat to human life and globally important ecosystems, according to documents and expert testimony received by the Guardian.

The studies suggest engineers failed to anticipate the impact of water shortages on the Pimental dam at Belo Monte, which has been closed and turned into a barrier. This is forcing the operators to choose between a structural weakening of the 14km-wide compacted-earth barrier and a reallocation of water in the reservoir or on the Xingu river, which is home to indigenous communities, fishing villages and some of the world’s most endangered species.

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Rightwing columnist smacks journalist Glenn Greenwald on Brazil radio show

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Greenwald has faced backlash from far right after series of articles damaging to Jair Bolsonaro’s government

Brazil’s bitterly divided politics reached a new low on Thursday, when a rightwing columnist smacked the US journalist Glenn Greenwald in the face on a live radio program.

Greenwald and Augusto Nunes are prominent figures on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Thursday’s physical violence – which was being livestreamed – left Brazilians stunned.

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Oil spill threatens vast areas of mangroves and coral reefs in Brazil

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Pollution stretches across 2,400km of coastline, with scientists fearing contamination of food chain

Hundreds of kilometres of mangroves and coral reefs, as well as humpback whale breeding grounds, are under threat from an oil spill that has polluted more than 2,400km of Brazil’s north-eastern coast in the last two months.

The Brazilian Navy, which has deployed 8,500 personnel, 30 ships and 17 aircraft in the cleanup operation, said this week that 4,200 tonnes of oil have been removed from beaches, amid fears by scientists that some has already entered the food chain.

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Brazil’s flat Earthers to get their day in the sun

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A first-ever conference in São Paulo will mark a high point for a theory that has thrived under the far-right President Bolsonaro

Siddhartha Chaibub’s suspicions that the Earth wasn’t really round were first aroused when he stumbled across a YouTube video while living in Brazil’s capital, Brasília.

“I was always very sceptical about things,” said the 35-year-old freelance designer, who soon dived deep into the flat Earth universe: reading, watching videos and joining a dedicated WhatsApp group.

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Brazilian ‘forest guardian’ killed by illegal loggers in ambush

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Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed by armed loggers in the Araribóia region in Maranhão

A Brazilian indigenous land defender has been killed in an ambush by illegal loggers in an Amazon frontier region.

According to a statement by the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Association, Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot and killed inside the Araribóia indigenous territory in Maranhão state. Another tribesman, Laércio Guajajara, was also shot and hospitalised and a logger has been reported missing. No body has yet been recovered.

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Brazil blames devastating oil spill on Greek-flagged tanker

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  • Ship carrying Venezuelan crude was only vessel in area at time
  • Attorney general’s office calls damage to coasts ‘immeasurable’

A Greek-flagged ship carrying Venezuelan crude was the source of an oil spill which has tarred thousands of kilometers of coastline over the past two months, Brazilian investigators have announced.

Police said the tanker appears to have spilled the crude about 700km (420 miles) off Brazil’s coast between 28 and 29 July, bound for Singapore with oil loaded at Venezuela’s San José terminal.

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Brazilian president’s son suggests using dictatorship-era tactics on leftist foes

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Eduardo Bolsonaro’s incendiary remarks prompted many across the political spectrum to condemn him

Voices from across Brazil’s political spectrum have condemned the son of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, after he suggested hardline dictatorship-era tactics might be needed to crush his father’s leftist foes.

Related: An explosion of protest, a howl of rage – but not a Latin American spring

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Venezuela wins UN human rights council seat despite record of abuses

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Other seat for Latin America went to Brazil, whose far-right leader has expressed contempt for the concept of human rights

Activists have responded with outrage after Venezuela won a fiercely contested vote for a seat on the UN’s human rights council on Thursday, despite its well-documented record of human rights abuses.

The 193-member world body elected 14 members to the 47-member council on Thursday for three-year terms starting in January, with Venezuela claiming one of the two seats allocated to Latin America with 105 votes.

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Oil contaminating Brazil’s beaches ‘very likely from Venezuela’, minister says

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Government says foreign ship appears to have caused the spill, in accusation likely to further strain Brazilian-Venezuelan relations

Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.

Related: 'Chaos, chaos, chaos': a journey through Bolsonaro's Amazon inferno

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Brazil’s uncontacted tribes face ‘genocide’ under Bolsonaro, experts warn

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Letter says groups are in danger amid Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to overturn existing policies to protect indigenous people

Brazil’s last uncontacted tribes face “genocide” thanks to Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to overturn existing policies to protect the country’s indigenous people, a group of leading experts have warned in an open letter to the far-right president.

The alert came after one of the country’s leading experts on isolated and recently-contacted indigenous people was abruptly dismissed from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, with no reason given.

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Jair Bolsonaro pictured with second accused in Marielle Franco murder case

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Photos of Brazil’s president with a suspect in the killing of a Rio councillor have emerged – seven months after a similar incident

Brazilian opposition figures and human rights observers are seething after a photo emerged of the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, grinning and giving the thumbs up alongside a man arrested in connection with the murder of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco.

It was the second time the president has been photographed alongside a suspect in Brazil’s most high-profile political murder in a decade.

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‘War for survival’: Brazil’s Amazon tribes despair as land raids surge under Bolsonaro

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Activists say onslaught has intensified as illegal loggers and land-grabbers take the president’s verbal offensive against indigenous communities as a green light to act

More than 30 bullet holes told Awapu Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau a sinister tale.

“Their message is that they’re going to finish us off, isn’t it?” the village chieftan said as he examined the pockmarked sign warning outsiders to stay off the giant Amazon reserve he calls home.

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Brazilians blame Rio governor’s shoot-to-kill policy for death of girl

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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.

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‘Caught defenseless in the crossfire’: Rio families cope with deaths by police violence

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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.

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‘Chaos, chaos, chaos’: a journey through Bolsonaro’s Amazon inferno

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A 2,000km road and river odyssey in Brazil reveals consensus from all sides: Bolsonaro has ushered in a new age of wrecking

From afar it resembles a tornado: an immense grey column shooting thousands of feet upwards from the forest canopy into the Amazonian skies.

Up close it is an inferno: a raging conflagration obliterating yet another stretch of the world’s greatest rainforest as a herd of Nelore cattle looks on in bewilderment.

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