[vox_mundi]

Brazil’s Elite React To Trove Of Leaked Audio Recordings By Trying To Ban Audio Recordings

Leaked secret audio recordings of Brazil’s most powerful figures have sparked a series of explosive scandals in the nation’s ongoing political crisis. Now, Brazilian lawmakers are trying to outlaw publication of such recordings.

A bill, which has been idling since last year in the Câmara dos Deputados, Brazil’s lower house of Congress, has picked up new steam this month. The proposed legislation seeks to criminalize the “filming, photographing or capturing of a person’s voice, without authorization or lawful ends,” punishable by up to two years imprisonment and a fine. If the recording is published on social media, the penalty rises to four to six years.

When it was originally introduced, the bill was criticized as one of many proposed draconian measures designed to protect politicians and a direct threat to freedom of expression and the press.

The anti-recording bill was introduced in 2015 by Deputado Veneziano Vital do Rêgo, of interim President Michel Temer’s increasingly right-leaning PMDB party. Rêgo, who voted for the impeachment of now suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, has reason to fear being secretly taped: He is a suspect in 35 pending investigations for various financial and administrative crimes, as of April, according to Transparência Brasil, a leading anti-corruption watchdog, and the fact-checking website Agência Lupa.

The Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, which called the bill “troubling” and “unbelievable,” said the law would criminalize such everyday activities as filming a birthday party and posting it on social media. On Medium, the institute wrote that the bill “prevents journalistic and investigative activities of great significance and endangers anyone who performs audiovisual activities. It is an unconstitutional bill, which violates the freedom of expression and other constitutional principles such as the right to information and prerogatives of the media.”

The bill would not block the federal police’s use of secret recordings, but would prohibit any recording — secret or open — conducted without full consent and not produced in “the public interest,” a subjective term that would likely be left to the discretion of judges.

This week, leaked recordings revealed the president of Association Magistrates of Paraná state secretly coordinating retaliatory legal actions against journalists who reported on judges’ inflated wages. Brazilian courts have also ordered Marcelo Auler, an independent journalist, to take down 10 articles reporting on leaks and illegal wire taps related to Operation Car Wash, the ongoing corruption probe, and banned him from publishing any future reporting on the subjects.

Brazil Might Have 7 Former Presidents with Police Issues

Yesterday, it was made public that Brazil’s Prosecutor-General asked the Supreme Court for the arrest of high-profile members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB, the same of acting President Michel Temer). Senate President Renan Calheiros, Senator Romero Jucá, and former President José Sarney are all accused of conspiring to tamper with Operation Car Wash, an ongoing anti-corruption investigation.

For Sarney, an 86-year-old man who served as President in the 1980s, the Prosecutor-General asked for a house arrest and the wearing of a tracking device on his ankle. The former President released a statement saying that, after 60 years as a public man, he deserved more respect from the Prosecutor-General – whatever that means.

But this wouldn’t be the first time a president has been arrested in Brazil. Six other presidents have been forcefully taken by the police, either during or after their time as the head of state; some were victims of authoritarian regimes. The most recent incident involves Lula da Silva, who was temporarily detained by police this past March. Here’s a recap of these run-ins: ...

Brazil Police Accuse Samarco of Paving Way for Dam Disaster

Brazil's mining company Samarco, a joint venture between Vale SA and BHP Billiton, has been accused of cutting safety spending in favor of production in relation to a deadly dam burst last November, the country’s federal police said Thursday as part of an investigation.

Police said Samarco had skimmed on safety spending, focusing instead on increasing production despite obvious indications, such as cracks, that the dam was in danger of a breach.

As well as Samarco, police accused Vale of misconduct because it deposited its own mining waste in the dam, and VogBR, the service company that checked the safety of the dam. Eight executives were also accused, although their names were not disclosed by the police.

As a result of the collapse a village was destroyed, killing 19 people, drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people were interrupted and damage extended right up to the mouth of a river on the Atlantic coast, with wildlife, tourism businesses and fishing communities all suffering.

Brazil's Fundao dam collapse: The silence after the mud

... There was time. There was time to evacuate everyone, had only the warning come

... The enormous wave from the Fundao dam flowed along this same route, devastating aquatic life in the river. Fishermen lost their livelihood, and farmers lost their irrigation source and livestock. The drinking water of millions of people was contaminated, and more than 900 hectares of soil was covered in toxic sludge.

The mud's voyage down the river took 16 days, and the concerns of the inhabitants of the towns and cities along its banks grew day by day. According to many, and confirmed by a Samarco official who declined a formal interview, no information was given about what contaminants were present in the water, nor were instructions on how to respond to the disaster issued.

Almost as a warning of what was to come, dead fish came floating down the river.

"We heard about how the mud was about to flow down the Rio Doce," recalls Luciano de Bem Magalias, director for SAAS, a water a sewage company in Baixo Guandu, a village more than 400 kilometres away from the dam collapse.

"The first thing we saw was tonnes of dead fish flowing past us … and a stink of rotten mud and dead animals," he says.

During a press conference in November, Samarco reassured the residents that the waste floating down the river did not constitute any danger to humans - a point disproved later by an analysis of Baixo Guandu's water that registered arsenic, manganese and other poisonous substances.

"No one would tell us if the water was drinkable," Magalias says, "and everyone here relies on the river."

Brazil judge dismisses $5.7 billion civil suit against Samarco: Vale

Welcome, Olympic Tourists, to Brazil. Please Don’t Mind the Mess

That sewage-filled harbor that visitors will pass on the way from the airport -- and the spot where Olympic sailing events will be staged -- was supposed to be a shimmering, clean bay. That new metro line they’ll take from the posh Ipanema beach neighborhood to the games will at best run on a limited schedule, having started operations just four days before the opening ceremony. And what about the state-of-the-art gear that police were supposed to get to help keep travelers safe? A top official says it never happened.

Welcome to Brazil, a land of political, economic and fiscal crisis.

Brazil federal police raid Olympic site in corruption investigation

Brazilian federal police on Tuesday raided the offices of the consortium responsible for Olympic construction projects at the Deodoro site in northern Rio de Janeiro as part of a major corruption investigation.

Five construction firms are building most of the 39 billion reais (NZ$16.2 billion) worth of venues and infrastructure needed for Rio's Olympics. The figure includes at least 1.76 billion reais (NZ$731.5 million) in federal funds, according to documents from Brazil's federal accounting court.

All five companies are caught up in an investigation into price fixing and political kickbacks at state-run oil company Petrobras. That two-year probe has seen scores of top executives and politicians jailed or charged so far.

Federal prosecutors have in the past said they found evidence of fraud in earth-moving services at the Deodoro venue, which will host Olympic sports such as shooting, equestrian events and the pentathlon.

Federal authorities have already said they are investigating the Porto Maravilha project, an 8-billion-real (NZ$3.33 billion) facelift of Rio's dilapidated port area, and also the expansion of the city's metro line to the Olympic area in Barra.

Trump Towers Rio Is Coming To Porto Maravilha

Mayor Eduardo Paes, Alberto Silva, President of Rio de Janeiro’s Port Area Urban Development Company (Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano da Região do Porto do Rio de Janeiro – Cdurp); National Managing Director of Special Investment Funds for Caixa Econômica Federal; and Donald Trump Jr, Executive vice-president of Trump Organization; , announced at a press conference at The Palácio da Cidade, in Rio de Janeiro, the partnership for the development of the largest corporate office complex in Brazil.

Trump Towers Rio will be the first project to bear the Trump brand in Brazil.

... We are incredibly excited to announce Trump Towers Rio. Brazil is an extremely important market for us and one that I have been looking forward to entering into. I believe that with the demand for the Trump brand coupled with the unparalled location and highly advanced design, there will be nothing like this in Brazil and beyond — says Donald Trump Jr.

... over 4,000 families were forcibly evicted to make way for construction

Since the beginning of the term of this government, abandoned areas in the city are undergoing rehabilitation – the project “Porto Maravilha” is the best example of that. ... I am certain we are on the right track and this project is a proof of that – highlights Mayor Eduardo Paes.

[vox_mundi]

As Corruption Engulfs Brazil's "Interim" President, Mask Has Fallen Off Protest Movement

... Plainly, these were not anti-corruption marches but rather anti-democracy marches: conducted by people whose political views are a minority and whose preferred politicians lose when elections determine who leads Brazil. And, as intended, the new government is now attempting to impose an agenda of austerity and privatization that would never be ratified if the population had any say (Dilma herself imposed austerity measures after her 2014 re-election, after running on a campaign against them).

After yesterday’s huge news from Brazil, the evidence that these protests were a sham is now overwhelming. An oil executive and ex-senator from the conservative opposition party PSDB, Sérgio Machado, testified as part of his plea bargain that Michel Temer — Brazil’s “interim” president who conspired to get rid of Dilma — demanded 1.5 million reals in illegal kickbacks for the São Paulo mayoral campaign of his party’s candidate (Temer denies this). This comes on top of multiple other corruption scandals in which Temer is implicated, as well as a court-imposed eight-year ban on his running for any office (including the one he now occupies) due to violations of campaign spending laws.

But ever since the lower House vote on Dilma’s impeachment, the protest movement has disappeared. For some reason, the “Vem Pra Rua” (come to the streets) contingent is not out in the streets demanding Temer’s impeachment, or Aécio’s removal, or Jucá’s imprisonment. Why is that? Where have they gone?

Another Minister Down In Brazil

Brazil’s Minister of Tourism, who had been accused of receiving illegal money, just resigned. He’s the third minister to lose his position within a month

It’s got to be some sort of record. Since taking office as Brazil’s interim President, Michel Temer has now lost three ministers to embarrassing situations. The latest to lose his position is a close friend of the President, Henrique Eduardo Alves, who served as Minister of Tourism. He is accused of taking $442,000 in corrupt money by a whistleblower, who decided to cooperate with prosecutors working for Operation Car Wash. Alves decided to resign immediately to avoid any embarrassment to the federal administration.

Brazil's Eduardo Cunha faces loss of seat in Congress

Brazil's suspended lower house Speaker Eduardo Cunha has been dealt a major blow after a committee voted in favour of stripping him of his seat.

Mr Cunha is widely regarded as the architect of the impeachment process of President Dilma Rousseff.

He has been accused of lying about undeclared Swiss bank accounts but strongly denies any wrongdoing.

If the full lower house approve the move, he faces losing his partial immunity from prosecution. He could then be arrested and prosecuted on corruption charges.

‘A Slow Genocide’: Gunmen Attack Indigenous Again In Brazil

From the U.S. State Department ... crickets

[Newfie]

Thanks for all your work Vox. It's appreciated.

[vox_mundi]

Thanks Newf. It's springtime so I've been spending more time smelling the roses.


Road to Rio: As Crime Explodes In Rio, Private Security Forces Step In As Protectors

At just past 6 a.m. on Saturday, May 7, a young woman named Ana Beatriz Pereira Frade was riding with her stepfather along a busy highway in northern Rio de Janeiro, not far from where many of this year's Olympic events will take place in August. They were going to the airport to surprise Ana's mother, who was returning from a trip. According to police and media reports, a gang of five to eight masked men surrounded their car in the middle of the highway when traffic slowed. The men brandished guns, and demanded money. Perhaps panicking, Ana's stepfather jammed the gas and attempted to surge through a blockade. The move backfired; one of the gunmen shot into the car. The bullet struck and killed Ana, who was 17 years old.

The suspects are still at large.

Deaths like Ana's are tragically common in this part of the world, but hers gained international attention when Rivaldo, considered one of the greatest soccer players ever, seized on the crime to showcase just how violent Rio can really be — and why tourists should stay away from the 2016 Olympics.

“Things are getting uglier here every day,” Rivaldo wrote on his Facebook page. “I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio — to stay home. You’ll be putting your life at risk here. This is without even speaking about the state of public hospitals and all the Brazilian political mess. Only God can change the situation in our Brazil.

”Many of the wealthier people who plan to attend the games in August aren't waiting for help from on high: They'll be bringing their own security forces — and even, in some cases, their own medical personnel.

From pickpockets to kidnappers to fears of an Islamic State group terror attack, there is enormous pressure on event organizers for the 2016 Summer Olympics to keep athletes and tourists safe. Brazil’s federal government has pledged $200 million to staff the events with 85,000 officers, but in the months leading up to the event, it’s become increasingly unclear if Brazil’s security forces can actually handle the breadth and scope of the games.

According to recent reports, basic safety contracts have yet to be signed, surveillance cameras have not been installed, and, more recently, one of the event’s top security chiefs resigned. Skepticism hangs over all the planning. As one former police captain put it recently: "If we depend on the structure that is being prepared for these games, we are extremely vulnerable to these attacks, just like what happened in Paris and Brussels.”

Private Security Firms are Big Source of Weapons for Rio Criminals

Over 30 percent of all weapons belonging to private security firms in Rio de Janeiro end up in the hands of criminals, authorities say, highlighting an important yet often overlooked source of firearms for criminal groups throughout Latin America.

A Federal Police report accessed by Globo states that at least 17,662 firearms were diverted or stolen from the stockpiles of private security companies in Rio de Janeiro state over the last 10 years. This figure represents 30.2 percent of all the weapons owned by Rio's 222 security firms, according to Globo.

Criminals obtained more than 900 weapons between 2011 and 2015 just from security companies based in the capital city of Rio de Janeiro. The number of weapons diverted from private security companies rose by almost 100 percent during that five-year period, from 128 in 2011 to 255 last year.

Some 95 percent of the state's security firms are run by active military and police or former members of the armed forces and military police, according to authorities.

... Police shootouts are a near-daily occurrence, and about 40,000 Brazilians die every year from gun-related homicides, making Brazil the "murder capital of the world." One recent study found that, of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world, 21 are in Brazil.

This month, Brazil's Public Security Institute published new crime figures for Rio de Janeiro, and they paint an ugly picture. The number of murders is up 15.4 percent from last year. Street robberies increased 23.7 percent. Car thefts increased by 19.7 percent. Part of the rise in crime has been attributed to an economic recession, as well as budget shortfalls for police and security forces. "The recession has really hit Rio hard," says Abbott Matthews, an intelligence analyst at iJET International. "The police suffered budget cuts, and that’s hurt their security forces. ... There’s shortages. There’s not enough police officers all the times."

Just two months before Rio hosts the Olympics, a much-vaunted “pacification” program in the city’s favelas appears to be crumbling, and a wave of violent crime is causing anguish among city residents.

“People are desperate. We have a failing economy, nothing for these communities, no opportunities,” said Theresa Williamson, founder of a nonprofit group called Catalytic Communities that works in favelas.

To compound the situation, Rio’s state government is broke and has slashed police budgets by a third. The state relies heavily on tax revenue from offshore oil fields, and its revenue has been decimated by the tumbling global price of oil.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... story.html

Wave of deadly gunbattles hit Rio as the Olympics get closer

When gunbattles break out in the impoverished hilltop communities that overlook Rio De Janeiro, some residents hide in the bathrooms of their homes. Others take shelter under staircases.

In the case of Max Groy, he had very few options.

As a coach of the German Olympic Sailing team, he was fueling up his boat at a waterfront gas station last month when he heard a sound that he initially thought was firecrackers.

"All of the sudden everybody started running at the gas station and hiding behind things," he said. "So I thought, that might be time to just lay flat in the motor boat and hide as well."

Groy emerged unscathed, even though he said bullets struck water and pavement some 20 meters away. The veteran sailor, himself a former Olympic athlete, said it was the first time he witnessed a gunfight.

"It was surreal," he said. "That's the stuff you see in movies, but not in real life."

... Liliane Sabio, a teacher who works in a library in a favela in Rio's Santa Teresa neighborhood, said at least six stray bullets flew into the library when daytime clashes erupted between police and gang-members on May 25.

During the battle, police armed with long semiautomatic rifles sprinted past school children and other frightened residents, taking cover behind cars and aiming their weapons up the hill.

Top police officer in Rio insists the city will be safe when hundreds of thousands of tourists and athletes are expected to arrive for the Olympics in August.

"Rio is not the safest place in the world," said the city's mayor, Eduardo Paes, in a separate interview with CNN last week.

Before the Olympics in Rio, GE Is Enabling Street Lights to Detect Gunfire

Fifty days out from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, General Electric has announced it will install a light system in the city of 6.3 million that can detect gunshots within one meter of accuracy, two GE officials tell Inverse.

Cargo Theft is Big Business for Brazil Crime Groups

Cargo theft is emerging as one of the principal illicit revenue streams of organized crime groups in Brazil and some of those profits are funneled into more traditional pursuits such as arms and drug trafficking.

Some of the country’s biggest criminal organizations, like Rio de Janeiro’s Amigos dos Amigos (ADA), Red Command (Comando Vermelho - CV), and Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP), as well as São Paulo’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), have added cargo theft to their historical focus on drug-trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion.

Since around 2012, cargo theft in these cities has spiraled out of control. It is one of the fastest growing criminal practices in the country, with Rio and São Paulo the worst affected cities. According to government reports, cargo theft is estimated to cost companies in Brazil more than $558 million a year, Strada reports.

Yet, despite huge losses and the detrimental effect on investment in Brazil, the crime is often overlooked. While not as lucrative as drug-trafficking, cargo theft helps finance other criminal activities.

A report in Globo notes that instances in Rio increased by a further 11 percent during the first three months of 2016. Evidence would suggest that powerful organized crime groups, police corruption, and a worsening state economy are largely to blame.

Victim of Rio gang rape speaks out as police bungle her case

[vox_mundi]

Let the Hunger Games begin ...

Rio State Declares 'Public Calamity' Over Finances

The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has declared a financial emergency less than 50 days before the Olympics.

Interim Governor Francisco Dornelles says the "serious economic crisis" threatens to stop the state from honouring commitments for the games.

In a decree, Mr Dornelles said the state faced "public calamity" that could lead to a "total collapse" in public services, such as security, health and education.

He authorised "exceptional measures" to be taken ahead of the Games that could impact "all essential public services", but no details were given.

The state has projected a budget deficit of $5.5bn (£3.9bn) for this year.

Most public funding for the Olympics has come from Rio's city government, but the state is responsible for areas such as transport and policing.

The governor has blamed the crisis on a tax shortfall, especially from the oil industry, while Brazil overall has faced a deep recession.

Rio state employees and pensioners are owed wages in arrears. Hospitals and police stations have been severely affected.

Rio expects about 500,000 foreign visitors during the Olympics in 50 days

Rio 2016: Brazil detects Islamic State radical posts in Portuguese

Authorities in Brazil have detected users exchanging messages in Portuguese linked to the Islamic State extremist group in an online web forum, intelligence services say.

The warning raised security concerns about the potential existence of sympathisers of the armed group in the Olympic host country, which was previously thought to be relatively free of Islamic extremism.

Pre-Olympic jitters had already risen after a French jihadist warned on Twitter after deadly attacks in France last November that Brazil was the "next target."

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency said in a statement that it "confirms the existence of a group and its way of operating" online with jihadist messages.

It said the group was found on Telegram, an online messaging application.

"Content relating to extremist ideologies is translated to Portuguese and reproduced in that instant messaging application," the agency said.

The group was first detected by the SITE Intelligence Group, a non-government group that monitors extremist communications online.

SITE issued an alert saying that people linked to the Islamic State were thought to be spreading messages from the group in Portuguese.

[vox_mundi]

In Brazil’s Olympic bay, Tides of Death and Ecological Devastation

Brazil's Temer Looks to Shut Down Public TV

Brazil's interim President Michel Temer will introduce a bill in Congress to cut the budget of public broadcaster Brazilian Communication Group (EBC), which would lead to closing down TV Brasil.

Temer plans to maintain a few departments of the EBC, according to daily Fohla de Sao Paulo, like the news agency and the webpage, but means to close the public TV channel, which requires about half of the company's resources.

The bill also considers to dissolve the EBC's Council, formed with 22 independent members, and allow the destitution of its President by the Executive Power.

Temer had previously dismissed EBC President Ricardo Melo, who appealed the decision before the supreme court and temporarily recovered his position, in the waiting of a definitive decision.

Brazil fines Samarco 142 million reais for damages to protected areas

Brazil's Environment Ministry fined mining company Samarco 142 million reais ($41.6 million) for damages to three protected areas resulting from a tailings dam burst in November, the ministry said on Friday.

The ministry said in a statement the three areas on the coast of Espirito Santo state were contaminated by metals such as lead, coper and cadmium. The metals spilled from the dam and were carried all the way from Minas Gerais through the Doce River to the ocean.

Experts from the Environmental Ministry found several species had been wiped out in the contaminated areas, the statement said.

Drought A Factor in Duke Energy South America Electric Sale

In July 2015, just 11 months ago, the analysts at Seeking Alpha, an investor research group, declared that Duke Energy’s Latin American power stations were “a cornerstone of the company’s growth strategy given its access to the energy hungry Latin American market.”

In February, in a striking turnabout, Duke announced it was putting its South American assets up for sale. The decision, driven in part by low production and reduced revenue from Duke’s hydropower plants in Brazil, will end nearly two decades of investment and management of electrical infrastructure by Duke Energy in Latin America.

Through most of the last two decades the directors of Duke Energy, which earned total revenues of $US 23.5 billion last year, joined utility stock analysts in viewing Duke’s Energy International division as a smart investment that was invaluable to the company’s revenues and profits.

But a deep drought in São Paulo in 2015 sharply cut production and revenues from its Brazilian hydropower plants. Moreover, changes in the dollar exchange rates in several countries, particularly Peru, hurt revenue and earnings. Political volatility in Brazil and several more companies also hindered economic development and made it more difficult to operate in Latin America, said analysts.

The sudden turn in Duke’s South American business is a striking display of how water-related ecological distress contributes to economic instability that can quickly disrupt operations at even the largest industrial companies. All across the globe big energy companies are encountering unexpected and severe water-related stresses that destabilize operating conditions and risk stranding valuable economic assets.

Major hydropower plants were wrecked by disastrous floods in India in 2013. Two huge coal-fired power stations in South Africa may be unable to operate at full efficiency due to water scarcity. Two Andes gold mines have been shut down in the last several years by communities concerned about water pollution. Chinese authorities curtailed plans to build 100 coal-fired power stations, due in part to water scarcity in the dry Yellow River basin.

Duke Energy seeks to evade losses by selling its South American power plants, which one U.S. investment group valued at more than $US 2 billion.

[onlooker]

I know of no dynamic now which encompasses so well what can only be described as a good vs evil battle as that which you are referencing Vox

[vox_mundi]

I know of no dynamic now which encompasses so well what can only be described as a good vs evil battle as that which you are referencing Vox

True; there are lessons to be learned from Brazil by Americans (if only the MSM and US government showed any interest in revealing them)

New Brazil Corruption Scandal Could Implicate 30% of Lawmakers

Two top executives from Brazil's Odebrecht and OAS construction multinationals, which stand at the center of a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal, are in competition to secure a plea bargain from federal authorities which could implicate a staggering 29 percent of the nation's elected officials, Brazilian media outlets reported Sunday.

The legal defendants of Marcelo Odecrecht told the press Sunday that their client has already agreed to participate in a deal that would implicate over 175 deputies and senators from the 594 currently serving in the National Congress.

However, Odebrecht is also in competition with his former business rival Leo Pinheiro, a former executive with OAS, since prosecutors have indicated they may only issue one plea bargain deal.

As part of the agreement, Brazilian authorities are requesting that both Odebrecht and Pinheiro provide new information and concrete testimonies to help prove that Brazilian politicians accepted bribes and in exchange granted government infrastructure contracts to the companies of Odebrecht and OAS.

According to Odebrecht’s legal team, the preliminary terms of his plea bargain will include testimony and evidence linking hundreds of Brazil’s most powerful politicians in the illegal bribery scheme, including current President Michel Temer.

The exact terms of Odebrecht's plea bargain are still being negotiated with authorities but are also expected to include evidence showing the participation of nearly 50 company executives who had, at different times, some level of participation in the "illicit and illegal financing" of political activities scheme.

Brazil's House Speaker Won't Fall Without Dragging His Colleagues with Him

A Reuters source affirms that "Cunha is the only sitting Brazilian lawmaker to face trial in the massive bribery investigation focused on state oil company Petrobras [for] which he was indicted for receiving a US$ 5 million bribe related to contracts."

Cunha's involvement in the scandal signals a warning to other politicians. Despite his singular involvement as the only lawmaker to currently face such trial, if convicted, Eduardo Cunha vows to bring other officials down with him.

In that case, Cunha would not be the only one entangled in this scandal. This alleged threat from Cunha could be alarming for those he is allied with such as current Brazilian interim President Michel Temer.

For Temer, a plea bargain on behalf of Cunha may link more members of his government and ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party to corruption. Without a doubt, this would be troubling for Temer's presidency.

Cunha is not the only one in his family accused of corruption. His wife, Claudia Cruz, was accused on June 9 for using stolen money from Petrobras for personal, luxurious spending. Similarly to her husband, Cruz denies this and all other accusations against her.

Swiss authorities have found that Cruz is controlling a Swiss bank account in the name of a Swiss company, which she and her lawyer used to cover more than US$ 1 million in credit card expenses between 2008 and 2014. She has allegedly used deposited money from an offshore account to pay for expensive products like clothes, handbags, shoes, and their children's education.

The couple's daughter, Danielle Dytz, has also benefited from her parents' fraud. Investigators say that she has spent a huge amount of money from credit cards abroad.

Brazil's Temer Govt on Fire, 4th Minister Could Resign

Brazil's current Minister of Education is the latest public official in the Michel Temer administration to be implicated in the country's political corruption scandal.

Brazil's coup imposed Education Minister Mendonca Filho is being investigated for allegedly receiving an illegal bribe of US$29,000 for the purpose of financing his 2014 re-election campaign, Brazil's General Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot announced Friday, making him the latest official in Temer's administration who could be forced to stand down.

During a Supreme Court hearing Friday, General Prosecutor Janot argued that "evidence of possible bribes for his [Mendonca Filho's] political campaign” would result in the court having jurisdiction to investigate potential criminal practices.

Minister of Education and Culture Mendonca Filho is also implicated in Operation Car Wash, which lies at the core of the country’s corruption probes and involves accusations of money laundering and fraud involving the state oil company Petrobras.

A coup in Brazil

When I was recently in France, I was surprised by how much TV news coverage there was about the impeachment of the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff. It was the lead news story each day I was there in early May.

To the extent Americans are paying attention to Brazil, focus turns to the Zika virus and the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio in August. We generally pay little attention to news outside our country, unless it is about terrorism.

Much of the discussion about Brazil on French TV looked at the question of whether the impeachment of President Rousseff was, in fact, a coup d’etat by the right-wing opposition. The reasons for President Rousseff’s removal seem murky at best. She has not been charged with stealing money or any crime.

... So we have a situation where the right wing interim president and some of his allies face actual corruption charges while they engineer the ouster of a president charged with no crime.

To appreciate this black comedy, it helps to place Brazil’s current political situation in a historical context. The writer Eduardo Galeano in 1990 described Brazil this way:

“There is no country in the world as unequal as Brazil. Some analysts even speak of the Brazilianization of the planet in sketching a portrait of the world to come. By ‘Brazilianization,’ they certainly don’t mean the spread of irrepressible soccer, spectacular carnivals or music that awakens the dead, marvels that make Brazil shine brightest; rather they’re describing the imposition of a model of progress based on social injustice and racial discrimination, where economic growth only increases poverty and exclusion.”

[vox_mundi]

This Company Just Filed Brazil's Biggest Bankruptcy Ever

Oi filed for Brazil’s largest ever bankruptcy protection on Monday after the country’s No. 1 fixed-line phone carrier ran out of time to reorganize operations and restructure 65.4 billion reais ($19.3 billion) of debt amid a harsh recession.

Last week, Oi warned that, without a debt restructuring, 92% of existing cash would be depleted by year-end, making operations “unsustainable.”

The bankruptcy of Oi SA, the largest in Brazil’s history, is reverberating through the nation’s strained financial industry as investors tally the potential hit to creditors.

Even as Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris said he’s prepared to invest in the wireless carrier, Monday’s bankruptcy filing is likely to leave Banco do Brasil SA, Itau Unibanco Holding SA and others with steep losses on their holdings of Oi debt and trigger payments on $14 billion of derivatives contracts that are designed to pay out in an event of a default. Adeodato Volpi Netto, the head of capital markets at Eleven Financial Research, in a phone interview said ...

“I don’t see a solution for Oi,” ... “The company will be sliced and sold in pieces as possible. There won’t be enough cake for everybody.”

Analysts said that Oi’s debt was unsustainable in the short term, with almost half of it maturing by the end of 2017. Debt-servicing also posed a challenge for Oi, whose debt is 75% denominated in currencies other than the Brazilian real—which fell 16% against the U.S. dollar in the past two years.

Especially challenging was the maturity of 230 million euros ($260 million) in bonds of Portugal Telecom International, scheduled for July.

At the same time, creditors whose positions in credit default swaps tied to the Portugal telecom International notes surpassed their bondholdings by a large margin had an incentive to disrupt talks or trigger a default, the source said.

How Sergio Machado, son of oil executive in Brazil’s corruption scandal banked top $14m Credit Suisse salary

The last place you’d expect to find one of Credit Suisse’s highest-paid executives in 2015 is Brazil, given all the political and economic challenges facing the country.

But Sergio Machado’s 48.4 million reais ($14 million) paycheck ranks above that of every member of Credit Suisse’s executive board listed in the lender’s annual report.

For long-time Brazil watchers, that name should sound awfully familiar. It was Machado’s father, a politician-turned-oil executive who goes by the same name and is testifying against top lawmakers in Brazil’s sweeping corruption scandal, who was on the front page of every major newspaper last week.

The elder Machado, a former politician who went on to head state-run Petroleo Brasileiro’s logistics arm, admitted to passing along 100 million reais in kickbacks to political campaigns.

... How, market insiders want to know, could an investment banker have possibly earned so much in a year in which Dealogic data shows fees tumbled 42 per cent to the lowest level in a decade, as Brazil’s stock and bond markets collapsed? Globally, the bank, whose market value has lost half its value in the past year, announced a fresh round of job cuts in March, bringing its total headcount reduction to 6,000.

A Desperate Search for Gold After Brazil's Worst Mining Disaster Ever

Wildcat mining is on the rise in communities devastated by the collapse of a dam that in November unleashed a deadly avalanche of sludge from the giant Samarco iron-ore mine, killing residents and destroying homes. Thousands were left jobless amid a deep national recession. But the landslide also churned up riverbeds enough to expose flecks of precious metal like those that sparked Brazil’s first gold rush three centuries ago.

“The situation is very serious,” Mariana Mayor Duarte Junior said. “You have people looking for work, but there isn’t any to be had. Our unemployment rate has hit 27 percent.”

For some, the only option is to search for what’s left of the gold.

New Brazil Corruption Scandal Could Implicate 30% of Lawmakers

Two top executives from Brazil's Odebrecht and OAS construction multinationals, which stand at the center of a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal, are in competition to secure a plea bargain from federal authorities which could implicate a staggering 29 percent of the nation's elected officials, Brazilian media outlets reported Sunday.



Deacon: So here it is, I need to know ... First one that tells me lives. - Waterworld (1995)

[vox_mundi]

‘The Donald Trump of Brazil’ Will be Prosecuted for Allegedly Inciting Rape

The man often referred to as the Donald Trump of Brazil is in hot water again.

Back in 2014, Brazilian far-right congressman Jair Bolsonaro, speaking about a fellow congresswoman, told a local magazine: “She doesn’t deserve [to be raped] because she is very bad, very ugly and isn’t my type, I would never rape her. I am not a rapist, but, if I was, I wouldn’t rape [her] because she’s not worthy of it.”

Its incendiary comments like the one from 2014 that have led Brazilians to make comparisons between Bolsonaro and Trump. But some of Bolsonaro’s comments make Trump seem like a country gentleman. He has said, for example, that he wouldn’t be capable of loving a homosexual son and that he would rather the son died in an accident. And he has also said that women should earn less because they get pregnant. He even said that the mistake with the Brazilian dictatorship that ended in 1985 was that they tortured rather than killed people.

Brazil House Speaker Cunha indicted for money laundering, currency dealing

Brazil's Supreme Court on Wednesday indicted suspended speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha on charges of money laundering and illegal currency dealing, dragging the powerful politician further into the sweeping scandal involving state-oil company Petrobras.

"There is concrete evidence that deputy Eduardo Cunha received (illicit) funds," Teori Zavascki, the supreme court justice overseeing the case, said in the ruling.

It is the second time charges have been accepted against Cunha in the so-called Car Wash investigation, which centers on kickbacks paid to politicians by construction companies working with Petrobras.

The move could increase the chance of Cunha taking a plea deal, a scenario that concerns many in his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) party, to which interim President Michel Temer belongs. He has warned that he will take others down with him.

Brazil police arrest former Planning Minister Bernardo

Investigators said Bernardo, who was planning minister and communications minister during Workers Party administrations from 2005 to 2014, received more than 7 million reais ($2.08 million) in kickbacks. The Workers Party also benefited from the scheme, police said at a news conference.

The raids included the house of Senator Gleisi Hoffmann, Bernardo's wife and another longtime senior official from the Workers Party. Police also detained former Social Security Minister Carlos Gabas for questioning.

Bernardo and Hoffmann were indicted in March on charges of corruption for their suspected involvement in an illegal campaign finance scheme.

Brazil’s attorney general: ‘You have to change the system’

... Once the medium-sized contracting companies started collaborating, they explained how the system worked, and we found documents that showed they had a system based on the rules of a soccer championship. They called it “the Contractors’ Club.” Each company was a team, and they would play against each other. When a public contract was up, Brazilian law requires that a minimum of three companies bid against each other to see who gets the contract.

It was a fake competition to get the contracts. They would offer prices that were set beforehand, and they knew who would get it. Illegal. Cartel is a crime in Brazil.

It is a systemic problem. If you don’t change the system, we will take down these people, but others will come and replace them.

... We are trying to figure out how the top tier worked, the architecture of the whole criminal organization. We have no doubt it was a criminal organization.

While Brazil Was Eradicating Zika Mosquitoes, America Made Them Into Weapons

The resurgence of A. aegypti mosquitoes

... In the 1950s, while in South America military-like brigades were hunting down Aedes aegypti, in the United States, the Army was falling in love with the same mosquito.

At Fort Detrick, the military's biological weapons base in Maryland, in great secret, Army scientists were considering how fleas, grasshoppers, and mosquitoes might be deployed against the Communist threat. These insects were harder to protect against than gas— masks wouldn’t help. The threat they posed would last, as long as a population of insects remained alive. Plus, it would be very difficult to pin an insect-borne attack on the U.S.

Among these possible insect soldiers, A. aegypti was “the golden child,” writes Jeffrey A. Lockwood, in Six-Legged Soldiers, because the disease it carried, yellow fever was so terrible. The Army Chemical Corps, in a 1959 report, notes that yellow fever is “highly dangerous” and that “since 1900, one-third of patients have died.” There were parts of the Soviet Union that had never been exposed to the disease, which made them vulnerable, but which had the right climate to support mosquitoes. The Chemical Corps started to experiment with how a brigade of A. aegypti might be deployed and what sort of damage they might do.

Even now, there’s a limited amount of public information about these experiments, and much of what’s known comes from one Chemical Corps report published in 1960. Mostly, though, it seems that Army mosquito researchers were raising hordes of insects and releasing them in different situations. In 1956, looking to see how quickly and how well A. aegypti could penetrate houses and spread through the area, the Chemical Corps released a fleet of uninfected female mosquitos in a residential area of Savannah, Georgia, and collected data from locals on how often they had been bitten. (There’s no information about which neighborhood was afflicted; apparently the Corps had the “co-operation of people in the neighborhood,” although it’s not clear they knew they were part of an experiment.) That same year, the Corps started experiments in Avon Park, in Florida. They would load hundreds of thousands of mosquitos into planes and, later, helicopters, then drop them over the field and see how far they could spread.

The mosquitoes apparently performed well enough: By 1960, the Chemical Corps was producing 500,000 A. aegypti every month, rearing them on sugar water and blood and letting them lay their eggs on paper towels. Scientists had found they could infect a new generation of mosquitoes with yellow fever by mixing the virus in the solution in which the mosquito eggs grew. Hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes were not enough to start a real epidemic, though. The corps proposed constructing a facility in Arkansas that could produce 100 million A. aegypti mosquitoes each week.

It’s unlikely that the Public Health Service knew what the Army was doing—the Army’s program was a closely held secret, and details did not start becoming public until the 1980s. But at the end of the 1950s, the two branches of government were working directly at odds to one another. As the Chemical Corps reports details, in 1957 and 1958, the Army was releasing A. aegypti in Avon Park, in the middle of the Florida peninsula. In those same years, in the Panhandle, the Public Health Service had finally started a pilot program to eradicate A. aegypti in Pensacola, Florida.

[vox_mundi]

Brazil Experiences Worst H1N1 Flu Outbreak since 2009 Pandemic

In 2009, a major worldwide H1N1 flu pandemic killed around 18,500 in 214 countries. In Brazil, there were 2,060 confirmed deaths. Since then, a vaccine for the disease, which is also known as “swine flu” ,has been developed and distributed in Brazil. Still, 2016 has been the worst year since the 2009 pandemic: 1,003 have already died from H1N1 – just last week, there were 117 deaths.

Almost half of the cases were registered in the state of São Paulo. In total, 5,214 cases of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which is related to H1N1 infections, have been reported so far in 2016. According to the Ministry of Health, infections have been registered much earlier than usual this year, at wintertime. And that helps explain why it has been so deadly this year in comparison to previous ones.

There is no explanation as to why the virus arrived earlier this year. International travels and climate factors are the more probable hypotheses, experts say.

Nothing like adding 500,000 new hosts from 180 countries to spread the virus globally.

[vox_mundi]

Brazil's Bible, Beef and Bullets Lobby Backs Temer, Unfazed by Scandal

Conservative legislators in Brazil say they will back interim President Michel Temer through a growing corruption scandal in return for support for their right-wing social agenda, including tougher abortion restrictions and looser gun control.

Leaders of the so-called "Bible, beef and bullets" caucus -- which groups evangelical Christians, the farm lobby and lawmakers determined to ease strict firearms controls -- are keen to see Rousseff dismissed from office after she threatened to veto its social and business agenda.

"The corruption allegations will not stop us supporting Temer's economic plan," said Senator Magno Malta, an evangelical pastor who rose to fame as singer in a gospel band and who is a prominent member of the lobby.

"Temer is a Christian, who believes in family values and that God meant marriage to be between a man and a woman. Our agenda will move forward now." Now they want to seize the opportunity to restrict gay rights and abortion, lower the age of criminal responsibility and advance farmers' interests in conflicts with Indian tribes.

... Temer's appointment of billionaire Blairo Maggi as agriculture minister -- the so-called King of Soy whose family business is the world's largest soybean producer -- was seen as an overture to the powerful farm lobby.

Farm state lawmakers also support a bill relaxing gun control rules that is being pushed through by lawmakers backed by Brazil's firearms industry, a lobby that advocates the right to own weapons.

A bill that passed committee last year would undo key parts of Brazil's 2003 Disarmament Law, which was hailed by human rights groups as a key step toward containing crime and armed robbery in cities

[vox_mundi]

State Department Turns Blind Eye to Evidence of Honduran Military’s Activist Kill List

State Department Spokesperson John Kirby on Wednesday repeatedly denied that the government of Honduras kills its own citizens, saying more than a dozen times that he has not heard “credible evidence” of “deaths ordered by the military.”

His comments came in the wake of a high-profile assassination of Honduran native-rights activist Berta Cáceres in March, and a report in the Guardian that a high-level deserter from the Honduran army said he is “100 percent certain that Berta Cáceres was killed by the [Honduran] army.”

The deserter explained that Cáceres’s name and picture appeared on a kill list including “dozens of social and environmental activists,” which had been distributed to two elite, U.S.-trained units.

Since Honduras’s right-wing regime seized power in a coup in 2009, media and human rights organizations have compiled overwhelming evidence of Honduran military and police violence.

Kirby’s comments were even at odds with the State Department’s own human rights reports on Honduras, which for the last two years have referred to “unlawful and arbitrary killings and other criminal activities by members of the security forces.”

The U.S. maintains a very close relationship with Honduran military. Since a military coup deposed leftist President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, the United States has provided nearly $200 million in military aid to the Central American nation. The U.S. also maintains a network of at least seven military bases in Honduras, which house a permanent force of more than 600 special operations troops. In February, the Wall Street Journal published a video showing American forces teaching Honduran forces how to conduct night raids.

Officially linking U.S.-backed Honduran forces with human rights violation would trigger legally-required reductions in aid – in addition to putting the State Department in the uncomfortable position of criticizing a client state, and casting doubt on Clinton’s wisdom in backing the coup.

After other reporters joined in the questioning, Kirby expressed frustration that he had repeat that there was “no credible evidence” of state murders more than a dozen times. “The reason you’re being asked to repeat it is because it’s kind of hard to believe,” said Associated Press diplomatic correspondent Matt Lee. Watch the video: State Department Daily Briefing - AKA: Propaganda

Brazil's Temer Received $300 Million Bribe for Nuclear Project: Whistleblower

Brazil’s acting President Michel Temer allegedly received a bribe of US$296 million that Engevix company owner Jose Antunes Sobrinho paid through intermediaries for work on Brazil's nuclear power plant, Brazilian magazine Epoca reported Saturday. The report cited allegations by the executive in efforts to secure a plea bargain with federal authorities.

In his proposed plea bargain, Antunes alleges that Joao Batista Lima, owner of the Sao Paulo-based architecture firm Argeplan and a close friend of Temer, had received work contracts in exchange for granting bribes to the current Brazilian head-of-state.

Lima, a former military police colonel, has repeatedly been accused of being the “key person involved in the dirty work” between companies and PMDB politicians.

If his plea bargain request is granted, Antunes says that he can prove Temer received a bribe of US$296 million in exchange for a construction contract that was awarded to Argeplan to build the Angra III nuclear-generation unit, which forms part of Brazil's sole nuclear power plant.

Brazil's Shuttered Anti-Doping Lab

The World Anti-Doping Agency suspended the lab in Rio that tests urine and blood samples just ahead of the Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency said Friday it was suspending the city’s accredited laboratory from conducting tests on urine and blood samples due to “non-conformity” with the International Standard for Laboratories. The suspension, which took place Wednesday, will remain in place until the Brazilian Doping Control Laboratory “is operating optimally.” WADA did not specify on the lab’s shortcomings.

The lab has had several issues in recent years. It lost its certification before the 2014 soccer World Cup, also held in Rio. Authorities had to outsource its drug testing to a lab in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In that case, authorities had to transport the samples from 32 teams across the Atlantic. But in the Olympics, with far more teams competing, it’s a greater challenge to get testing done in a timely fashion.

Brazil reportedly spent $60 million to prepare its laboratory. That apparently was not enough.

Brazil Is Top Cocaine Trans-shipment Country for Europe, Africa, Asia

... According to the 2016 World Drug Report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Brazil tops the list of the most frequently cited countries of departure for cocaine arriving in African, Asian and European markets.

The vast majority of the cocaine destined for North American markets is trafficked northward from the Andean region of South America, through Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico, and finally into the United States and Canada.

Although very little cocaine production takes place inside Brazil itself, virtually all of the world’s cocaine comes from coca plants grown in Brazil’s neighbors to the north and west -- Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. And there are several reasons why Andean cocaine often makes its way through Brazil before being shipped on to international markets.

One major factor is Brazil’s status as the world’s second largest consumer of cocaine, behind the United States. Brazilian crime groups have been known to maintain a presence in cocaine-producing neighboring countries going back more than a decade. Brazil’s long, loosely monitored and sparsely populated borders allow for the relatively easy movement of all sorts of contraband, including drugs, into the country.

After trafficking cocaine into Brazil for domestic sale, it is likely that Brazilian crime groups use their profits to help finance the shipment of cocaine abroad. The fact that Brazil is home to some of Latin America’s busiest shipping centers, including the port of Santos, makes the country a natural staging ground for illicit products destined for global markets. In fact, according to a documentary produced last year by The Guardian, as much as 80 percent of the cocaine arriving in Europe transits through Santos.

[vox_mundi]

Brazil's Hypermarcas sinks as former executive admits bribery

Shares of Hypermarcas SA, the largest Brazilian producer of generic drugs, had their biggest intraday plunge in four years on Tuesday, on reports that a former senior executive admitted paying bribes to ruling coalition politicians.

According to newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, Mello admitted to prosecutors paying 30 million reais ($8.85 million) in bribes to senators of the PMDB party. Estado said Senate President Renan Calheiros and former Planning Minister Romero Jucá, both from the PMDB, were recipients of the bribes.

"The news is disturbing - How is it possible that 30 million reais were spent without 'accountability?' What were Mr. Mello's motivations?" Credit Suisse Securities analysts led by Tobias Stingelin wrote in a client note.

The situation underscores how current corruption investigations in Brazil are triggering warning signs among dozens of Brazilian companies, as findings of corruption, graft and bribery rings spread to more sectors of the economy.

To Win Over Bond Traders, Brazil Utility Taps New CEO Amid Fraud Investigation

... The utility’s auditor, KPMG LLP, has refused to sign off on its U.S. financial statements as an internal team of lawyers and accountants tracks the alleged fraud in projects from a nuclear power plant tucked in a Rio de Janeiro bay to a massive hydrodam deep in the Amazon jungle, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said last month. The filing delay prompted the delisting of Eletrobras’s American depositary receipts.

On May 10, the nation’s electricity regulator ordered Eletrobras to reimburse the government because of irregularities in how it managed a fund used to finance a program to improve access to electricity. Fitch Ratings estimates Eletrobras may have to pay back 7 billion reais over 90 days if it can’t successfully appeal the ruling.

Brazil Congress investigates lawmaker's alleged support of torture

Brazil's Congress on Tuesday opened an ethics investigation into Jair Bolsonaro, an outspoken lawmaker whose views on torture, rape and homosexuality are sparking concern that the country's political crisis may foster an authoritarian political revival.

The ethics committee of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, will try to determine if Bolsonaro, a former Brazilian Army paratrooper, broke parliamentary decorum when he prefaced his vote in April to impeach President Dilma Rousseff with a speech praising Army Colonel Carlos Ustra.

Courts have found Ustra, a notorious Army intelligence officer during the 1964-1985 military regime, responsible for torture. Rousseff, a former left-wing insurgent, was tortured by Ustra's Army intelligence unit.

For his congressional opponents, Bolsonaro's backing of Ustra represents support of torture.

Cold snap kills homeless in Sao Paulo, Brazil's richest city

Sao Paulo (AFP) - Even under three blankets, Marcio Carvalho can't stop shaking as he seeks shelter on the streets of Brazil's biggest and richest city, Sao Paulo. "Life on the street is very difficult and dangerous," he added.

The teeming streets in the centre of a city that is home to 20 million people are deserted at night except for members of the estimated 16,000 homeless population. Homeless people and local media also accused security officers of stripping street people of their blankets and mattresses, prompting an outcry.

And while much of Brazil basks in tropical conditions, a chilly snap in the first days of the southern hemisphere winter has already claimed the lives of six people this month.

Cold is his latest enemy. Temperatures hit a 22-year low in early June to 3.5 degrees Celsius (38 degrees Fahrenheit).

For those who fall through the cracks in Brazil's crumbling economy, the landing is brutal, says Silvia Schor, an economics professor at Sao Paulo University.

"Survival conditions in Sao Paulo are cruel," she said. "The city has inacceptable inequality, where income distribution means a lot of families can't have their own house."

But Nothing is Too Good for the Rich ...

Brazil Banks Postpone Pain by Giving Companies More Time to Pay

Brazil’s biggest banks, already reeling from a surge in bad loans, tried to avoid deeper losses as phone company Oi SA headed toward default, agreeing to a grace period of at least four years with no payments on 17 billion reais ($5.1 billion) in debt.

Banks are eager to keep struggling borrowers from failing to avoid losses and capital reductions. While the practice of lengthening payback times can help viable companies recover, in many cases it only postpones the day of reckoning.

Head of Brazil sugar mill bought by fund sees many closures ahead

Several Brazilian sugar mills will close in the near future despite the sector's improving outlook, because their debt situation is no longer manageable, the head of a mill acquired by a U.S. fund this year said late on Monday.

"Many mills cannot be saved. Their debts are so big that no restructuring can work, unfortunately," said Gaeta after a presentation at an ethanol conference in Sao Paulo.

He added that they continue to operate because they still have cane, which they process and sell as ethanol immediately to pay workers and keep running, but they are approaching insolvency, if they are not already there.

"At some point they will stop," he said.

Cane industry association Unica estimates that around 80 mills have filed for bankruptcy protection in the last three years. Some 70 more closed doors. There are less than 300 mills operating in the main center-south cane belt.

50 more mills that have yet to file for creditor protection could simply collapse.

"There is no credit, no new investment," he said.

Brazil's credit crunch threatens commodity exports, farmers

SAO PAULO - Brazil's worst credit crunch in two decades is forcing the nation's debt-laden grain producers, sugar mills and coffee farmers to curb investment, making one of the world's top farm exporters miss out on a recovery in global commodity prices.

Banks, hit by a wave of defaults and bankruptcies triggered by the country's harshest recession in eight decades, tightened credit bringing lending growth to a 17-year low in April. Agricultural producers, which borrowed heavily in the past years to fund rapid expansion, were among those hit the hardest. "We've not seen credit contract like this in recent history," ...

The squeeze coincides with a recovery in global commodity prices. Sugar prices are at the highest in nearly 3 years; soybeans are at a two-year high; and coffee and corn prices are near their highest in almost a year. Brazil is No. 2 corn exporter and the top exporter for the other three commodities.

All four commodities have recently suffered major losses due to bad weather or market conditions, depleting producers' capital or loading them with more debts, exacerbating the contraction in credit.

[vox_mundi]

El Nino could drive intense season for Amazon fires

An analysis of data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission shows greater soil water deficits in 2016 than previous drought years with high Amazon fire activity.

The long-lasting effects of El Niño are projected to cause an intense fire season in the Amazon, according to the 2016 seasonal fire forecast from scientists at NASA and the University of California, Irvine.

El Niño conditions in 2015 and early 2016 altered rainfall patterns around the world. In the Amazon, El Niño reduced rainfall during the wet season, leaving the region drier at the start of the 2016 dry season than any year since 2002, according to NASA satellite data.

Wildfire risk for the dry season months of July to October this year now exceeds fire risk in 2005 and 2010, drought years when wildfires burned large areas of Amazon rainforest, said Doug Morton, an Earth scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who helped create the fire forecast.

"Severe drought conditions at the start of the dry season set the stage for extreme fire risk in 2016 across the southern Amazon," Morton said.

Smoke from Amazon fires eventually flows south and east over major urban centers in southern Brazil, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, contributing to air quality concerns.

... 100 year droughts every 5 years

[vox_mundi]

Drought stalls tree growth and shuts down Amazon carbon sink, researchers find

A recent drought completely shut down the Amazon Basin's carbon sink, by killing trees and slowing their growth, a ground-breaking study led by researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Leeds has found. Previous research has suggested that the Amazon -the most extensive tropical forest on Earth and one of the "green lungs" of the planet—may be gradually losing its capacity to take carbon from the atmosphere. This new study, the most extensive land-based study of the effect of drought on Amazonian rainforests to date, paints a more complex picture, with forests responding dynamically to an increasingly variable climate.

The study made use of two large-scale droughts occurring just five years apart, in 2005 and 2010, to improve understanding of how drought affects tree growth, and therefore the rate of uptake by trees of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.In the first basin-wide study of the impact of the 2010 drought and its interaction with previous droughts, the international team of researchers found that tree growth was markedly slowed by drought across the vast forests of the Amazon.

Lead author Dr Ted Feldpausch, senior lecturer in Geography at the University of Exeter, said: "The first large-scale, direct demonstration of tropical drought slowing tree growth is extremely important. It tells us that climate changes not only increase the rate of loss of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, by killing trees, but also slow down the rate of uptake. And yet, the Amazon clearly has resilience, because in the years between the droughts the whole system returned to being a carbon sink, with growth outstripping mortality."

Full Study: T. R. Feldpausch, et.al. Amazon forest response to repeated droughts, Global Biogeochemical Cycles (2016) DOI: 10.1002/2015GB005133

[vox_mundi]

Engulfed by Corruption Probe, Brazil’s House Speaker Resigns

Brazilian congressman Eduardo Cunha, who led the drive to impeach Dilma Rousseff, stepped down as lower house speaker on Thursday following allegations of corruption.

He announced his decision in a press conference in Brasilia, at times choking up with emotion, saying his decision would help ease the political instability that has rocked Latin America’s largest economy for the past year. His resignation will allow the lower house to hold elections for a new speaker as soon as next week.

The Supreme Court had already suspended Cunha as speaker after it opened a criminal case against him earlier this year on charges of accepting kickbacks. A congressional ethics committee in mid-June recommended the lower house remove him from office following allegations that he lied about the presence of a Swiss bank account used to hide dirty money. The full chamber hasn’t yet held a vote on the matter.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Shouldn't a separate topic like "Why I hate Brazil", or "Why I think the 2016 Olympics will fail" or something similar be started -- and all the stuff not related to the title in recent months be moved to that?

Or are we now lumping gloomy thoughts on Brazil generally under this thread, since the actual topic is clearly no longer an issue (per a quick Google search on "San Paulo water shortage" only yields one obvious 2016 result on the first page -- a Feb. Reuters article saying the drought is over"?)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazi ... SKCN0VR1YJ

Or is the doomer perspective to keep such threads alive just in case there is actually future relevant news on the topic?

[vox_mundi]

The Olympics are over; the international press have left. So now they can finish the coup ...

Violent Protests Flare in Brazil as New President Sworn In

Dilma Rousseff has reacted furiously to the Brazilian Senate's decision to remove her from office - describing it as a "coup".

Minutes after senators overwhelming voted to convict her of illegally using money from state banks to balance budget accounts (though, no actual law was broken), she tweeted:

Today is the day 61 men, many of them charged and corrupt, threw 54 million Brazilian votes in the garbage.

There were violent protests on the streets of Sao Paulo and Rio as Rousseff supporters smashed the windows of banks and other businesses.

China’s trans-Amazon railway stokes forest fears

With no one left in government to protect it, the Amazon is 'toast'

China’s fast-rising population and its burgeoning economy make steep demands on natural resources, so steep that Beijing is searching constantly for supplies from overseas. And it wants to obtain them, naturally, as cheaply as it can.

Now in prospect is China’s trans-Amazon railway – a 3,300 mile-long (5,000 km) artery to link the soya-growing areas and iron ore mines of Brazil to the southern Peruvian port of Ilo, providing a cheaper, shorter route than the Panama Canal. The plan was reported originally on the Diálogo Chino website [pdf].

Feasibility studies on three different trajectories were carried out by the China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group (CREEC). The route preferred by the Chinese, because it is cheaper and avoids the complex engineering work needed to traverse the Andes, would instead pass through heavily forested areas in the Amazon, home to many indigenous groups in both Brazil and Peru.

Miguel Scarcello, a geographer, from the NGO SOS Amazônia, [Portuguese only] says this route for the railway will also cross the headwaters of many rivers.

Both Brazilian and Peruvian environmental protection agencies have criticised those who chose the route for showing little concern for its impacts. The Peruvian ministries of culture and the environment said that native communities must be consulted.

A study carried out by Brazil’s state-run rail operator, VALEC [Portuguese only], concluded that, besides impacting sensitive ecosystems, the railway would also require the construction of an entire town in the heart of the Amazon to house all the workers it employed....

[vox_mundi]

Another nail in mankind's coffin

Brazil’s new government to sacrifice the Amazon for 'growth'

It's not that Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's ousted President, was wonderful for the environment, writes Ed Atkins. It's that Michel Temer's new regime is certain to be far worse. Plans are afoot to weaken environmental assessments for large projects like mines, roads and dams. And the new Minister of Agriculture is a notorious campaigner for hugely increased deforestation.

Earlier this year, Temer published a document titled 'A bridge to the future', which outlined his plans for the future of Brazil and its economy. The environment, the Amazon and climate change were not mentioned.

In particular, campaigners fear the new, pro-business government will fast-track dams, mines and other damaging schemes by weakening environmental impact assessments. A proposed bill, if passed, would allow for infrastructure projects to continue regardless of potential impacts on the environment and indigenous lands.

This opens the door for accelerated environmental damage in the name of economic recovery and growth.

Though activists cheered the recent cancellation of a $10 billion hydroelectric dam on environmental grounds, it seems such celebrations may prove to be premature.

A key figure behind this bill is senator Blairo Maggi, Brazil's soybean king and a former recipient of Greenpeace's Golden Chainsaw awarded to the "person who most contributed to Amazon destruction". Temer has recently appointed him Minister of Agriculture.

Maggi is a prominent member of the Agricultural Parliamentary Front (or ruralistas) that have long argued for land reform so that protected forests can be chopped down for crops, cattle and mining, with the products sold abroad. As of 2014, 28.4% of protected areas in the Amazon were of interest to mining companies.

These lands - protected by concerns for both the environment and indigenous communities - will likely witness further encroachment under Temer's government.

In recent months, this increasingly strong lobby has submitted a list of demands to President Temer, including land reform and increased subsidies for agriculture. The ruralistas also want to transfer responsibility for land demarcation from the executive to the legislature, where they dominate. The bill proposing this change was first drawn up in 2000 and is now back on the agenda after years in the doldrums. If passed, it would likely sound a death knell for future territory protection.

These 'land reform' schemes largely focus on the Amazon rainforest, where deforestation will likely continue thanks to lucrative opportunities in agriculture and mining. Tighter government budgets will also mean less money for those charged with keeping illegal loggers and miners out of protected areas. In a nation where 50 environmental defenders were murdered in 2015 - the most in the world - resistance will likely result in violence.