For The Rio Times
Seven violent attacks were reported in the southern Brazil state of Santa Catarina on Monday night, as a wave of violence which has seen dozens of buses torched reached its seventh day. In total, 54 violent incidents have been reported in 18 cities statewide since January 30th, military police said.
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After the disaster in Santa Maria’s Kiss nightclub, questions arise over Brazil’s ability to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics.
For Global Post
They were teenagers, mainly — bright young things studying medicine or agriculture, out to blow off steam before school started.
But before the night was through, they would die in their hundreds, choked by a toxic yellow fog and crushed by their peers as they groped blindly for an escape.
“It was worse than a scene from a horror movie,” said Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, who survived the blaze that killed 236 people in a nightclub in southern Brazil in the early hours of Sunday morning. “People screaming, crying, lots of injured people without their skin and with burned bodies.”
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For The Rio Times
At least 232 people have died in a nightclub fire in central Rio Grande do Sul, police have said. A band’s pyrotechnics reportedly started the blaze at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria at 2:30 AM Saturday night.
Police finished removing bodies from the scene late Sunday morning, Folha de São Paulo reported. In addition to the 232 confirmed dead by military police, 48 people are injured and receiving treatment.
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For The Rio Times
President Dilma Rousseff said Monday that the government had made strides in stemming the flow of drugs, arms and other contraband through Brazil’s long and porous border. During the past year and a half, 360 tons of drugs, 2,200 guns, 280,000 rounds of ammunition and twenty tons of explosives have been seized, she said, in her weekly program “Coffee with the President”.
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For The Rio Times
São Paulo police are no longer allowed to give first aid to victims who have been hurt in violent crimes or police clashes. A statement from the São Paulo State Public Safety Department says that as of Wednesday police are prohibited from moving victims from the scene and only emergency response teams and paramedics may treat victims at crime scenes.
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For The Rio Times
At least fourteen São Paulo police officers have been detained since Saturday on suspicion of killing or attempting to kill civilians. The arrests are likely to raise questions over police brutality in the wake of a wave of murders in São Paulo that some experts have partially attributed to extrajudicial killings.
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For Americas Quarterly
The numbers are almost too much to take in: 4,100 murdered this year. This figure does not refer to a war-torn country, but to São Paulo state: the biggest driver of Brazil’s economy.
As a report came out last week showing that Brazil had seen as many violent deaths—500,000—over the past 10 years as Somalia’s 20-year civil war, the death toll in São Paulo city continued to rise.
For a decade, violence in São Paulo had been steadily declining. But recent months have seen a bloody wave sweeping South America’s biggest city—driven by what experts says is a war between police and thePrimeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital—PCC), a criminal gang based out of São Paulo’s prisons.
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Brazil’s byzantine court system has kicked into high gear, nabbing corrupt politicos right near the top.
For Global Post
Over the past few months, strange things have been afoot in Brazil.
Ordinary Brazilians have been gripped nightly by complex corruption trials. Carnival masks have been fashioned in the likeness of a staid and somber judge, rather than the usual glossy celebrity.
And, most shockingly, elite politicians have been handed prison sentences for graft.
A massive vote-buying corruption trial known as the “mensalao” (big monthly stipend), dating from the administration of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has shaken things up.
For The Rio Times
Federal Police said Friday they had arrested six people in Brasília and São Paulo for alleged involvement in a corruption ring, in yet another case to veer uncomfortably close to former President Lula. In total, eighteen people – including Lula’s former assistant – are under investigation for influence peddling, bribery, conspiracy and forgery in connection with the scheme, which allegedly saw government approvals given to businesses in return for bribes.
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For The Independent
A Brazilian football star has gone on trial for orchestrating what prosecutors claim is the gruesome murder of the mother of his child.
It is alleged the former Flamengo goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes lured Eliza Samudio to a ranch where his accomplices beat and killed her, before feeding her remains to his dogs.
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