Category Archives: Brazil

Bolsonaro enjoys comedy club outing as Amazon fires rage on

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President watches rightwing comic as pre-recorded speech to nation on fighting fires airs

While the Amazon burned and Brazilians demonstrated their outrage, Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro went to a comedy club.

As the president’s pre-recorded speech to the nation explaining how he planned to use the army to fight the fires – while simultaneously insisting that the rate of burning of the forest was nothing out of the ordinary – was broadcast on television on Friday night, he was at a standup show in Brasília by right-wing Christian comic Jonathan Nemer.

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Jair Bolsonaro claims ‘profound love’ for Amazon rainforest as criticism intensifies

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President uses TV speech to criticise ‘disinformation’ about fire crisis, saying it cannot be used as pretext for sanctions

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has professed to feeling “profound love and respect” for the Amazon as fires continued to rage in the world’s biggest tropical rainforest and criticism of his environmental policies intensified.

In a televised address to the nation – met with pot-banging protests in several Brazilian cities – Bolsonaro said he was “not content” with the situation in the Amazon and was taking “firm action” to resolve it by deploying troops to the region.

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France and Ireland declare opposition to trade deal over Amazon fires

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Brazil’s handling of forest fires set to top agenda of G7 countries at meeting in Biarritz this weekend

Amazon fires: what is happening and is there anything we can do?

France and Ireland have said they will oppose an EU trade deal with South American countries unless Brazil takes action to stop the burning of the Amazon.

On the eve of a meeting of the G7 nations in Biarritz, an Élysée source said Emmanuel Macron thought Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, “lied” to him at the G20 meeting in Osaka in June about his climate commitments and therefore France would oppose the Mercosur treaty.

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Brazilian minister booed at climate event as outcry grows over Amazon fires

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Political storm over rainforest devastation as Ricardo Salles attends summit

The environment minister of Brazil, where wildfires have been sweeping the Amazon rainforest, was booed at a climate event on Wednesday as celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ariana Grande joined an international chorus of criticism.

Videos of Ricardo Salles being booed by demonstrators as he took to the stage at Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week in the north-eastern city of Salvador circulated widely in Brazil. An opposition senator is planning to seek his impeachment at Brazil’s supreme court.

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Brazil’s environment minister heckled at climate conference – video report

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Jeering activists interrupted a speech by Ricardo Salles on Wednesday at the Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week conference in Salvador, Brazil. Booing protesters virtually drowned out Salles' speech during which one activist held a placard reading: 'Don't you get tired of your own lies?' The minister and the government of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, have come under fire for their policies, which activists say are harming the environment

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Jair Bolsonaro claims NGOs may be setting Amazon rainforest on fire – video

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The Brazilian president has said NGOs could be burning down the Amazon rainforest to embarrass his government after he cut their funding. Bolsonaro had no evidence but said 'everything indicates' that NGOs are going to the Amazon to set fire to the forest

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Jair Bolsonaro claims without evidence that NGOs are setting fires in Amazon rainforest

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Brazilian president claims green groups behind rise in blazes, but offers nothing to support his assertion

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has accused environmental groups of setting fires in the Amazon as he tries to deflect growing international criticism of his failure to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.

A surge of fires in several Amazonian states this month followed reports that farmers were feeling emboldened to clear land for crop fields and cattle ranches because the new Brazilian government was keen to open up the region to economic activity.

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‘A second Trump’: Bolsonaro’s offensive rhetoric adds to Brazil’s discomfort

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Supporters say his tendency to speak freely is sincere – but detractors call it a PR disaster

He parleyed his way to Brazil’s presidency with a vote-winning barrage of scaremongering and bombast.

But eight months into Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right tenure, there is growing discomfort over the president’s inability – or refusal – to mind his mouth, and the impact this is having on Brazil’s place in the world.

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Norway halts Amazon fund donation in dispute with Brazil

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International concerns grow over deforestation surge since Jair Bolsonaro took power

Norway has followed Germany in suspending donations to the Brazilian government’s Amazon Fund after a surge in deforestation in the South American rainforest. The move has triggered a caustic attack from the country’s rightwing president.

Related: Bolsonaro rejects 'Captain Chainsaw' label as data shows deforestation 'exploded'

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Bolsonaro has blessed ‘brutal’ assault on rainforest, sacked scientist warns

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In interview with the Guardian, Ricardo Galvão says if the far-right leader doesn’t change tack the Amazon will be ruined

Illegal loggers are ramping up a “brutal, fast” assault on the Brazilian Amazon with the blessing of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, the sacked head of the government agency tasked with monitoring deforestation has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian five days after his dismissal, Ricardo Galvão said he was “praying to the heavens” the far-right leader would change tack before the Amazon – and Brazil’s international reputation as an environmental leader – were ruined.

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Bolsonaro rejects ‘Captain Chainsaw’ label as data shows deforestation ‘exploded’

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Data says 2,254 sq km cleared in July as president says Macron and Merkel ‘haven’t realized Brazil’s under new management’

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon “exploded” in July it has emerged as Jair Bolsonaro scoffed at his portrayal as Brazil’s “Captain Chainsaw” and mocked Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel for challenging him over the devastation.

Speaking in São Paulo on Tuesday, Brazil’s president attacked the leaders of France and Germany – who have both voiced concern about the surge in destruction since Bolsonaro took office in January.

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Brazil gang leader found dead in cell after masked jailbreak attempt

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Clauvino da Silva’s death days after escape bid dressed up as his daughter seen as humiliation for overcrowded jail system

The Brazilian gang leader whose attempt to escape prison dressed as his daughter made global headlines has been found dead in his cell in Rio de Janeiro.

The state prison service, Seap, said officers found the body of Clauvino da Silva, 42, on Tuesday morning at the high security prison complex he had attempted to flee. It added that he appeared to have taken his own life.

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Jair Bolsonaro plans to provide ‘legal cover’ to police officers who use lethal force – video

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Brazil's far-right president has said he hopes criminals will 'die in the streets like cockroaches' as a result of hardline legislation he is pushing to shield from prosecution security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders 

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Jair Bolsonaro says criminals will ‘die like cockroaches’ under proposed new laws

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Brazil’s president calls for security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders to be shielded from prosecution

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said he hopes criminals will “die in the streets like cockroaches” as a result of hard-line legislation he is pushing to shield security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders from prosecution.

In an interview broadcast on Monday, Bolsonaro said he hoped Congress would approve his controversial plans to expand the so-called excludente de ilicitude – an article in Brazil’s criminal code that makes some normally illegal acts permissible.

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Environmental activist murders double in 15 years

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Death toll almost half that of US troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, data shows

Killings of environmental defenders have doubled over the past 15 years to reach levels usually associated with war zones, according to a study that reveals how murders of activists are concentrated in countries with the worst corruption and weakest laws.

At least 1,558 people in 50 states were killed between 2002 and 2017 while trying to protect their land, water or local wildlife, says the analysis, which calculates the death toll is almost half that of US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

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Brazil gang leader dresses up as teenage daughter in jailbreak attempt

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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.

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Foiled prison escape for Brazilian gang leader who tried to sneak out dressed as daughter – video

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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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Amazon deforestation: Bolsonaro government accused of seeking to sow doubt over data

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Ministers look at setting up alternative monitoring scheme as existing system shows alarming rise in clearance rates

The Amazon forest is being burned and chopped down at the most alarming rate in recent memory, but the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is focused on reinterpreting the data rather than dealing with the culprits, monitoring groups have said.

At a clearance rate equivalent to a Manhattan island every day, deforestation in July was almost twice as fast as the worst month ever recorded by the current satellite monitoring system, which is managed by the government’s National Institute for Space Research.

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Gang violence leaves more than 50 dead in Brazil prison riot

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Prisoners decapitated and asphyxiated in city of Altamira, in dispute linked to local drug trade

At least 57 people have been killed in a gruesome gang battle that broke out in an prison in the Brazilian Amazon on Monday morning.

Officials said a local drug gang had invaded the wing controlled by its rivals in the city of Altamira in the state of Pará, decapitated 16 prisoners and set mattresses on fire, with dozens more thought to have asphyxiated in the smoke.

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