Category Archives: Brazil

Man in Brazil wrongly charged with 62 crimes after police use flawed photo ID

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Police relied on showing photo of Paulo Alberto da Silva Costa, wrongly jailed for years, to victims to identify him as an alleged perpetrator

Paulo Alberto da Silva Costa was having a regular day at work as a doorman in Rio de Janeiro when he was arrested in 2020. It was only then that he learned he was a suspect in 62 crimes: almost all were thefts, but there were also two homicide charges. Costa spent three years behind bars before Brazil’s supreme court recognised that it had all been a mistake.

There was one common element: every case relied solely on the fact that a witness or victim had been shown a photograph of Costa, and identified him as the alleged perpetrator.

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Brazil says Meta getting rid of factcheckers is ‘bad for democracy’

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Brazilian officials also ask tech giant to clarify whether it intends to implement changes in country within 30 days

The decision by the social media giant Meta to end factchecking in the United States is “bad for democracy”, Brazil’s newly appointed communication minister, Sidonio Palmeira, said on Wednesday.

Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stunned many with his announcement on Tuesday that he was pulling the plug on factchecking at Facebook and Instagram in the US, citing concerns about political bias.

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Investigators receive black box data from plane that crashed in Kazakhstan

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Authorities now have access to cockpit dialogue from Azerbaijan Airlines plane that went down on Christmas Day

Brazil’s air force has extracted the data from two black box recorders belonging to a crashed Azerbaijan Airlines plane that Baku claims was downed by Russia on Christmas Day, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

The Brazilian-made Embraer 190 crash-landed in Kazakhstan after being diverted from a scheduled landing in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in southern Russia. Azerbaijan believes the plane was shot down by Russian air defences, which Moscow says were operational in the area at the time.

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Latin America’s rise in tuberculosis linked to imprisonment rates

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Study warns region’s exponential rise in incarceration is fuelling the disease, with cases increasing by 19% between 2015 and 2022

High incarceration rates in Latin America – the region with the world’s fastest-growing prison population – are exacerbating tuberculosis in a region that is bucking the global trend for falling incidents of the disease, experts have warned.

A study published in The Lancet Public Health journal has estimated that, contrary to previous assumptions, HIV/Aids is not the primary risk factor for tuberculosis in the region – as it remains in Africa, for example – but rather imprisonments.

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Protection deal for Amazon rainforest in peril as big business turns up heat

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Exclusive: With Brazil’s politicians, agribusiness organisations and global traders piling on the pressure, the highly successful 2006 Soy Moratorium is under threat

One of the cornerstones of Amazon rainforest protection – the Soy Moratorium – is under unprecedented pressure from Brazilian agribusiness organisations, politicians, and global trading companies, the Guardian has learned.

Soy is one of the most widely grown crops in Brazil, and posed a huge deforestation threat to the Amazon rainforest until stakeholders voluntarily agreed to impose a moratorium and no longer source it from the region in 2006.

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More than 600 Brazilians deported by Home Office on three secret flights

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Record number of deportees includes children who may have spent most of their lives in the UK

More than 600 Brazilians, including 109 children, have been secretly removed from the UK – on the three largest Home Office deportation charter flights in history – since the Labour government came to power, the Observer has learned.

The Home Office has never before removed any nationality in such large numbers on individual deportation charter flights. It is thought that children have never before been removed on these flights.

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Bombshell police report details alleged Bolsonaro plot to stage rightwing coup

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Former president accused of leading role in apparent scheme to overturn 2022 election defeat by rival Lula

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has moved a step closer to jail after a federal police investigation laid bare what it called a murderous authoritarian plot to explode the country’s democratic system with a military coup that the far-right populist allegedly helped mastermind.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied involvement in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2022 presidential election, which he narrowly lost to his leftwing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Bolsonaro allies nearly launched military coup in 2022, police report says

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Senior Brazil military figures backed plot to seize power after Bolsonaro’s election defeat, federal documents allege

Brazil came within a whisker of a far-right military coup and the assassination of a supreme court judge just days before President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power in January 2023, a federal police report has claimed.

The report about the alleged plot to help the rightwing populist Jair Bolsonaro cling to power was made public on Tuesday, and paints a chilling portrait of how close one of the world’s largest democracies came to being plunged back into authoritarian rule.

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Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro charged with plotting coup d’état

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Police accuse 37 people of crimes including conspiracy and trying to tear down one of world’s largest democracies

The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and some of his closest allies are among dozens of people formally accused by federal police of being part of a criminal conspiracy designed to obliterate Brazil’s democratic system through a rightwing coup d’état.

Federal police confirmed on Thursday that investigators had concluded their long-running investigation into what they called a coordinated attempt to “violently dismantle the constitutional state”.

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Milei plan to privatise Argentina river sparks fears among local communities

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Communities on Paraná River fear privatisation of waterway operations will destroy way of life

River communities in Argentina fear that Javier Milei’s plans to privatise operations on a key shipping route could lead to environmental damage and destroy their way of life.

Since taking office almost a year ago, the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president has pledged to privatise a number of the state’s assets. The latest is the Paraguay-Paraná waterway – a shipping route of strategic importance for Argentina and its neighbours.

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Brazil celebrates Black Consciousness Day as national holiday for first time

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Legacy of African Brazilians honored on 329th anniversary of resistance leader Zumbi’s death by Portuguese forces

During the more than 350 years during which slavery was legal in Brazil, harsh conditions prompted a string of uprisings, often resulting in the establishment of quilombos – independent communities formed by escaped Africans who were formerly enslaved, and their descendants.

None were more prominent than the one known as Palmares, where, in the 17th century, as many as 11,000 people lived in a string of communities across parts of the north-eastern states of Alagoas and Pernambuco.

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Ukraine allies criticise G20 statement for not naming Russia’s role in conflict

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Scholz, Starmer, Trudeau and Macron among leaders who say communique finalized by Lula ‘not strong enough’

Ukraine’s western allies have criticised the final G20 communique as inadequate for failing to highlight Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in 2022 as the conflict enters its 1,000th day.

The final agreed text from the summit in Brazil was significantly weaker than that of the previous year, only highlighting humanitarian suffering in Ukraine and the importance of territorial integrity.

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Starmer twice declines to directly condemn jailing of Hong Kong pro-democracy figures

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UK prime minister was condemned by Iain Duncan Smith, who is on Beijing’s sanctions list

Keir Starmer has twice declined to directly condemn the jailing of dozens of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy figures, less than 24 hours after meeting China’s president at the G20 summit.

The UK prime minister was asked both during a BBC interview and at his press conference in Rio de Janeiro to respond to the jailing of the activists, including being asked if he would condemn the sentences directly, but he reiterated the importance of building bridges with China for the sake of economic growth.

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Take two: Biden makes it into G20 leaders’ photo after missing first one

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Summit leaders have reshoot in Rio after Biden, Justin Trudeau and Giorgia Meloni were no-shows the day before

The first time G20 leaders took their photo together at a summit in Rio, they forgot Joe Biden. On Tuesday, they had a reshoot – with the outgoing US president firmly back in the frame.

Biden; the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau; and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni all missed the photo on Monday due to what US officials called “logistical issues”.

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Brazilian police arrest five over plot to assassinate Lula after 2022 election win

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Four military personnel and a police agent held on suspicion of plan to prevent inauguration of president

Brazil’s federal police have arrested four special forces military personnel and one of their own agents on suspicion of planning the assassination of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on 15 December 2022 to prevent his inauguration after his victory over the then president, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro.

According to the police, the plot also included plans to assassinate the vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, and the supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, who at the time was already leading investigations into the so-called “hate cabinet,” as Bolsonaro mobs had become known.

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No-show Joe: G20 leaders take group photo without Biden

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US president arrived for photograph with other world leaders – but found they had gone ahead without him

Joe Biden headed for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday – only to find they had already taken the picture without him.

Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder which meant that Biden missed out on the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers.

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Lula launches alliance to combat world hunger as Brazil hosts G20

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Summit’s first day notable for frosty meeting of far-right Argentinian leader Javier Milei and leftwing host

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has opened the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro with the launch of an alliance to combat hunger, which he described as the “ultimate symbol of our collective tragedy”.

Brazil holds the rotating presidency of the group and is hosting the meeting this Monday and Tuesday, attended by all but two – Russia and Saudi Arabia – of the 19 member countries.

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Starmer aims to build ‘pragmatic and serious relationship’ in meeting with Xi

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Prime minister wants bilateral at G20 to lead to closer ties with China, which he sees as key to faster growth

Keir Starmer will become the first UK prime minister in six years to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, promising to turn the page on UK-China relations by building “a pragmatic and serious relationship”.

Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been pursuing a thawing of relations with the world’s second-largest economy on pragmatic grounds, suggesting that the UK cannot achieve its growth ambitions without better terms with China.

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Keir Starmer promises Ukraine will be ‘top of the agenda’ at G20

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UK prime minister to meet world leaders at summit in Brazil that Vladimir Putin has declined to attend

Ukraine will be “top of the agenda” this week at a meeting of leaders from the world’s most powerful economies, Keir Starmer has pledged, though he said he had “no plans” to follow the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and speak directly to Vladimir Putin.

Starmer will meet world leaders on Monday at the G20 summit in Brazil, which the Russian president has declined to attend, sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his place.

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Argentina seeks arrests of 61 rightwing rioters from Brazil

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Supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro wanted for role in 2023 storming of government buildings

Argentina has ordered the arrest of 61 Brazilian citizens for participating in the 2023 storming of government buildings in Brasília by supporters of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, an Argentine source said on Saturday.

Two people have been arrested so far who face prison sentences in Brazil, a judicial source in Argentina told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorised to speak publicly.

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