Paramedics failed to save 26-year-old Tales Soares after he fell to the floor at the parade in Sao Paulo
A model has died after becoming sick and falling on the catwalk at Sao Paulo fashion week in Brazil.
A statement from organisers said Tales Soares took ill on Saturday while in a parade of fashion brand Ocksa. A medical team attended to him on the catwalk and Soares was later taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Continue reading...Spat points to ideological rift between two factions while some see it as distraction
A turf war has broken out at the pinnacle of Brazilian politics, pitting a presidential son nicknamed ‘pitbull’ and a Steve Bannon-backed polemicist against a group of retired military chiefs led by Brazil’s vice-president, Hamilton Mourão.
The animosity between the two factions was exposed last week after Carlos Bolsonaro – son of the incumbent far-right president Jair Bolsonaro – repeatedly bashed Mourão on Twitter for urging the US-based Olavo de Carvalho to stop meddling in Brazilian politics and return to his former career as an astrologer.
Continue reading...Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president from 2003 and 2011, is in jail over corruption charges that he disputes
Brazil is being governed by “a bunch of lunatics” and United States “lackeys” who have shattered its international reputation, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has claimed in his first interview since being jailed one year ago.
Lula, Brazil’s president from 2003 and 2011, surrendered himself to police last April after being convicted on corruption charges he disputes.
Continue reading...Campaigners react strongly to Brazilian president saying he was opposed to gay tourism
Brazil’s far-right president, the self-declared homophobe Jair Bolsonaro, has been accused of inciting hatred towards LGBT people after declaring the South American country should not become a “gay tourism paradise”.
“If you want to come here and have sex with a woman, go for your life,” Bolsonaro reportedly told journalists in the capital, Brasília. “But we can’t let this place become known as a gay tourism paradise. Brazil can’t be a country of the gay world, of gay tourism. We have families,” Bolsonaro added, according to the Brazilian magazine Exame.
Continue reading...Pristine forests are vital for climate and wildlife but trend of losses is rising, data shows
Millions of hectares of pristine tropical rainforest were destroyed in 2018, according to satellite analysis, with beef, chocolate and palm oil among the main causes.
The forests store huge amounts of carbon and are teeming with wildlife, making their protection critical to stopping runaway climate change and halting a sixth mass extinction. But deforestation is still on an upward trend, the researchers said. Although 2018 losses were lower than in 2016 and 2017, when dry conditions led to large fires, last year was the next worst since 2002, when such records began.
Continue reading...Danilo Gentili, a conservative known for his aggressive attacks on the left, was tried over a 2017 clip he shared on social media
A row over free speech has erupted in Brazil after a foul-mouthed conservative comedian was given a six-month jail sentence for abusing a leftwing politician.
Known for his aggressive attacks on the Brazilian left, Danilo Gentili, 39, was sentenced by a judge in São Paulo on Tuesday for his comments about Maria do Rosário, a congresswoman for the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He remains free pending appeal.
Continue reading...One man was killed and two others wounded after army patrol opened fire on family driving to a baby shower
Ten Brazilian soldiers have been arrested after firing more than 80 bullets into a car carrying a family, killing one man and wounding two other people.
Evaldo dos Santos Rosa, 51, a musician and security guard, was driving the family to a baby shower on Sunday afternoon, when an army patrol opened fire on them in the low-income neighbourhood of Guadalupe.
Continue reading...Thirty-person expedition, including Funai officials and a doctor, contacted and vaccinated 34 people from the Korubo tribe
Brazil’s biggest and most ambitious expedition in decades to contact a voluntarily isolated indigenous tribe has been declared a success after venturing deep into remote and inaccessible Amazon jungle.
The rare, high-risk expedition aimed to prevent potential conflict between tribal groups in a vast and remote reserve near Brazil’s Peruvian border.
Continue reading...Police in São Paulo state have shot and killed 11 assailants who were preparing to simultaneously blow up ATMs at two branches early on Thursday, authorities said.
São Paulo state’s public security secretariat said in a statement that about 25 suspects were involved in the attempts to blow up the machines to get at the cash inside, a common type of crime in Brazil. Along with the 11 killed, another two men were arrested. No money was stolen.
Continue reading...Ricardo Vélez accused of ‘historical revisionism’ after saying school history books will be rewritten to give ‘a fuller version’
Brazil’s education minister has been accused of “historical revisionism” after saying school history books will be rewritten to give a positive spin to the country’s 1964 coup and 21-year military dictatorship.
Related: Brazil: tortured dissidents appalled by Bolsonaro's praise for dictatorship
Continue reading...Twins will each pay 30% of Brazil’s monthly minimum salary after DNA test failed to identify which man was her father
A Brazilian judge has ruled that two identical twins must both pay maintenance for a nine-year-old girl after a DNA test failed to identify which was her father.
Each man will have to pay 30% of Brazil’s monthly minimum salary – around £59 – and share the mother’s medical, dental, clothing and school costs.
Continue reading...Study suggests Brazil likely to rush to fill China’s sudden soy shortfall by boosting farming
The Amazon rainforest could be the greatest casualty of the trade war between the United States and China, warns a new study showing how deforestation pressures have surged as a result of the geopolitical jolt in global soy markets.
Up to 13m hectares of forest and savannah – an area the size of Greece – would have to be cleared if Brazil and other exporters were to fill the huge shortfall in soy supply to China that has suddenly appeared since Donald Trump imposed hefty tariffs, according to the paper published in Nature.
US exports of the commodity, primarily used to feed livestock, to China plummeted by 50% last year, which the authors say is an unusually sharp level of decline between two trading partners outside wartime.
Mining giant Vale raised level of risk at a dam in Barão de Cocais to highest alert meaning rupture is imminent
The Brazilian mining giant Vale said on Saturday that communities in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais had been ordered to evacuate after independent auditors found that one of its dams could collapse at any moment.
On Friday, the company raised the level of risk at a mining waste dam in the city of Barão de Cocais to three, the highest grade. According to Brazil’s mining and energy secretary, level three means that “a rupture is imminent or already happening”.
Continue reading...Leftist politicians refuse to attend lunch in honor of Brazil’s far-right leader after instruction for women to wear ‘short dress’
At the end of his first state visit to Washington DC this week, Jair Bolsonaro hailed his meeting with Donald Trump as a “historic moment”, claiming he was returning home with a sensation of “mission accomplished”. Today, Brazil’s far-right leader begins his second official trip – to Chile, where he is poised to receive a much less warm welcome.
Related: Fox News, nepotism and bigotry: Bolsonaro brings his Trump act to DC
Continue reading...Temer arrested as part of Operation Car Wash, which led to the convictions of numerous members of Brazil’s political elite
Brazil’s former president Michel Temer – who played a key role in the 2016 impeachment of his rival Dilma Rousseff – has been arrested by federal policewhile driving in São Paulo.
Judge Marcelo Breitas issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Temer and 11 others in “Operation Radioactivity” – part of Operation Car Wash, the country’s largest ever corruption investigation, which has led to the convictions of numerous members of Brazil’s political elite.
Continue reading...First visit to the US had all the drama of a soap opera – intrigue, betrayal, family, controversy – and left Brazilians divided
Jair Bolsonaro’s first official visit to the US had all the drama of a Brazilian soap opera – intrigue, betrayal, family, controversy.
But viewers back home in Brazil were left divided: a disastrous interview with Fox News prompted starkly contrasting verdicts, captured in the two trending hashtags: #BolsonaroShamesBrazil (#BolsonaroEnvergonhaOBrasil) and #Bolsonaro Pride of Brazil” (#BolsonaroOrgulhoDoBrasil).
Continue reading...Latest incident raises concerns about Brazil’s nuclear security in a state struggling with violent crime
A convoy of trucks carrying nuclear fuel came under armed attack on a highway in Rio de Janeiro state on Tuesday as it drove past a community controlled by a drug gang. Gang members armed with rifles opened fire on the convoy, Rio’s O Globo newspaper said.
Armed police escorting the convoy exchanged fire with armed gang members as the trucks carrying uranium continued to a nearby nuclear plant. The attack is the latest of several violent incidents in the area where Brazil has two nuclear reactors and has raised concerns about its nuclear security in a state struggling with high levels of violent crime.
Continue reading...Brazil president endorses hardline US immigration policy, saying ‘Vast majority of … immigrants do not have good intentions’
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has endorsed Donald Trump’s immigration agenda on the eve of their first meeting at the White House, saying he supports a wall on the US-Mexico border and that most immigrants to the United States wish to do harm.
Bolsonaro, a far-right congressman who rode to the presidency with a brash, anti-establishment campaign modeled on Trump’s 2016 run, has pledged a new era of pro-American policy in the southern hemisphere’s second-largest country.
Continue reading...Franco, an outspoken critic of police violence against favela residents, was killed in 2018, prompting international outrage
Two former police officers have been arrested over the murder of the Rio de Janeiro councillor Marielle Franco, two days before the first anniversary of her death, which prompted international outrage.
Franco, a groundbreaking politician who was born in one of Rio’s largest favelas and became a voice for disadvantaged people in the city, was killed in a drive-by shooting along with her driver, Anderson Gomes.
Continue reading...‘Bolsonaro is Fake News’ became a top hashtag in Brazil after president shared ‘false information’ to attack a journalist
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has provoked a storm of protest after sharing fake news to attack a journalist who has covered a scandal involving a former aide of his son Flávio, a senator who is also under investigation for money laundering.
Leading newspapers, the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association and the Brazilian Bar Association, criticised the far-right president for sharing a “misrepresentation” and “false information”.
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