Nicola Assisi, member of the organized crime group ’Ndrangheta was arrested with his son and await extradition to Italy
After five years on the run, one of Italy’s top cocaine dealers has been arrested in São Paulo along with his son.
Nicola Assisi, 61, a member of the Calabrian organised crime group ’Ndrangheta was arrested on Monday by Brazilian federal police, with his son Patrick, 36, who is also accused of drug trafficking.
Continue reading...Sérgio Moro became a national hero for his role as a judge in the sweeping graft scandal Operation Car Wash
Brazil’s justice minister, Sérgio Moro, has been granted a leave of absence following a slew of damaging leaks that have cast serious doubts over his impartiality as a judge in a sweeping graft scandal.
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, approved the break, from 15-19 July, for Moro to “deal with personal matters”, according to an official government document published on Monday.
Continue reading...Dictatorships of six countries conspired to kidnap and kill political opponents in 1970s
An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.
Related: How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
Continue reading...Bossa nova legend, 88, earns warm tributes – but not from president Jair Bolsonaro
Brazil is mourning the death of João Gilberto, one of the country’s greatest musicians and composers, a reclusive genius in a nation of extroverts whose work recalled happier, more optimistic times for a deeply divided nation.
Related: João Gilberto obituary
Continue reading...A rare concert in 1998 was a chance to see the great musical pioneer emerge from hiding – and why his glorious talent lifted him beyond pop fads
In 1998, I had the rare experience of seeing bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto live in concert in San Francisco. Gilberto, who died on Saturday at age 88, was a famous recluse known both for his magical music-making as well as his stage fright. If you had the chance to watch him perform live, you seized the opportunity because it might never happen again. This is my account of that memorable evening.
Related: Brazilian musician João Gilberto dies aged 88
Continue reading...In new disclosures, conservative magazine Veja says Sergio Moro, who led Operation Car Wash, guilty of serious ‘irregularities’
Brazil’s justice minister Sérgio Moro is facing renewed pressure to resign after the country’s leading conservative magazine waded into a snowballing scandal over his role in a mammoth anti-corruption investigation that helped reshape South America’s political landscape.
Related: Outcry after reports Brazil plans to investigate Glenn Greenwald
Continue reading...Deforestation in Brazil’s portion of the Amazon rainforest rose more than 88% in June compared with the same month a year ago, the second consecutive month of rising forest destruction under the rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.
According to data from Brazil’s space agency, deforestation in the world’s largest tropical rainforest totaled 920 sq km (355 sq miles).
Continue reading...Federal police reportedly asked money laundering unit to investigate the ‘financial activities’ of the US journalist
Brazil’s Bar Association, journalists and opposition lawmakers have reacted with outrage to reports that the country’s federal police plan to investigate the bank accounts of an American journalist who published leaked conversations between prosecutors and the graft-busting judge who is now Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister.
The rightwing site the Antagonist (O Antagonista) reported on Tuesday that federal police had asked a money-laundering unit at Brazil’s finance ministry to investigate the “financial activities” of Glenn Greenwald.
Continue reading...Investigation exposes how Brazil’s huge beef sector continues to threaten health of world’s largest rainforest
The cows grazed under the midday Amazon sun, near a wooden bridge spanning a river. It was an idyllic scene of pastoral quiet, occasionally broken by a motorbike growling on the dirt road that cuts through part of the Lagoa do Triunfo cattle farm to a nearby community.
But this pasture is land that the farm has been forbidden to use for cattle since 2010, when it was embargoed by Brazil’s government environment agency Ibama for illegal deforestation. Nearby were more signs of fresh pasture: short grass, feeding troughs, and salt for cattle.
Continue reading...The EU-Mercosur trade deal is good news for Brazil’s huge beef industry but devastating for the rainforest and environment
European leaders have thrown the Amazon rainforest under a Volkswagen bus in a massive cows-for-cars trade deal with Brazil and three other South American nations.
The EU-Mercosur agreement – the largest in Europe’s history, according to officials – will make it cheaper for Brazilian farmers to export agricultural products, particularly beef, despite growing evidence that cattle ranching is the primary driver of deforestation.
Continue reading...Dengue fever is one of the most deadly mosquito-borne diseases – half the world’s population is at risk from it. Adrienne Surprenant’s photos from the World Mosquito Program in Brazil capture the fight against it
Former ambassadors say far-right leader has cuddled up to rightwing nationalists, irked China, infuriated Middle Eastern partners, and jettisoned its position as climate crisis leader
It has long been considered one of the jewels of Latin American statecraft; a shrewd, dependable and highly trained foreign service that helped make Brazil a global climate leader and soft power heavyweight.
But six months into the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, even veteran diplomats struggle to mask their horror at the wrecking ball being taken to the country’s nearly two century-old foreign office, known as Itamaraty after the Rio palace where it was once housed.
Continue reading...Petra Costa’s powerful documentary charts the state’s descent into populism and the fraying of its democratic fabric
Brazilian actor-writer-director Petra Costa is known for mining her personal and family history for material. Her first feature, Elena, turned her search for her absent older sister into a deeply evocative documentary about loss, familial love, rivalry and displacement as it flutters between São Paulo in Brazil and New York City.
Costa’s latest documentary, The Edge of Democracy, finds her intersecting the personal and political on an even bigger public stage, and in the process documents a crisis erupting in slow motion at the heart of Brazilian politics. Thanks to extraordinary access to figures at the centre of the story – former leftist Workers’ Party presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (AKA Lula) and Dilma Rousseff, as well as rightwingers Michel Temer and current president Jair Bolsonaro – Costa manages to craft an intimate primer about the state’s descent into populism and the fraying of the country’s democratic fabric.
Continue reading...Failure leaves people in Argentina and Uruguay without electricity
Tens of millions of people across South America were left without electricity early on Sunday after a massive power failure left Argentina and Uruguay almost completely in the dark.
The Argentine newspaper Clarín said the “gigantic” power collapse – which it called the worst in Argentina’s recent history – had struck at just after 7am local time, affecting virtually the entire country as well as Uruguay, Paraguay and some cities in Chile.
Continue reading...Judge rules to convert Adélio Bispo de Oliveira’s detention to internment in state medical facility
A man who stabbed the then Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the torso last year has been absolved after a judge ruled he was mentally ill.
Adélio Bispo de Oliveira has been in police custody since 6 September 2018 when he was accused of stabbing Bolsonaro while he was campaigning in the streets of Juiz de Fora, a city 115 miles (186km) north of Rio de Janeiro. The blade pierced the candidate’s intestine and put his life in danger. The attacker was beaten badly by Bolsonaro supporters after the stabbing.
Continue reading...Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has sacked one of the most prominent moderates in his administration for reportedly failing to ideologically align himself with his commander-in-chief’s radical creed.
Gen Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, Bolsonaro’s secretary of government, had repeatedly locked horns with the president’s crotchety US-based guru, Olavo de Carvalho, and was reportedly relieved of his duties on Thursday afternoon.
Continue reading...Greenpeace estimates 50m hectares cleared by 2020, warning companies must evolve to prevent ‘climate breakdown’
An area twice the size of the UK has been destroyed for products such as palm oil and soy over the last decade, according to analysis by Greenpeace International.
In 2010, members of the Consumer Goods Forum, including some of the world’s biggest consumer brands, pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2020, through the sustainable sourcing of four commodities most linked to forest destruction: soya, palm oil, paper and pulp, and cattle.
Continue reading...Leaked cellphone chats published by the Intercept suggest Sérgio Moro, now justice minister, steered case against ex-president
Brazil has been rocked by allegations that a prominent judge repeatedly collaborated with prosecutors during high-profile corruption investigations – including the controversial case that imprisoned former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
According to the Intercept, Sérgio Moro gave prosecutors strategic advice, criticism and tips during the sprawling corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash that jailed hundreds of executives, politicians and middlemen.
Continue reading...This picture is taken from a book called Maldicidade by the Brazilian photographer Miguel Rio Branco. The title translates literally from the Portuguese as “malice”, but it carries too the echoes of the words “city” and “cursed”. Rio Branco grew up the son of a diplomat, citizen of the world and for half a century his camera has given him similar licence. Though earlier work, photo essays for National Geographic for example, focused on very specific communities – the young fighters of the Santa Rosa Boxing Academy in Rio de Janeiro or the prostitutes and street children of Salvador de Bahia – he has come to reject expected labelling of time and place.
The photographs in Maldicidade are uncaptioned, drawn from a lifetime of wandering the backstreets of New York, Havana, Barcelona and beyond. Rio Branco looks for those contrasts between grimy decay and daily renewal that are the universal fascination of city life. This picture, of a tray of fresh pastries served under the open bonnet of a beaten-up car, depicts exactly the kind of incongruity that his camera waits for. The colour and sweetness of those cakes contrast with the greys of the car and the street.
Continue reading...The Paris Saint-Germain star denies claims in a police document that he assaulted a woman last month
The Brazilian footballer Neymar has been accused of raping a woman in a hotel in Paris last month, according to a police document in Brazil.
The player’s father called the accusation by the unidentified woman “a setup” against his son.
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