Thousands have converged on Brazil’s cities for pro and anti-Bolsonaro demonstrations on Independence Day.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators have flooded the streets in Brazil in a show of support on Independence Day for President Jair Bolsonaro, who is locked in an all-out political battle with institutions including the Supreme Court.
Anti-Bolsonaro protesters also gathered for huge demonstrations in cities across the country on Tuesday, making the annual national day festivities a high-risk event, with a little more than a year to go to elections that polls currently put the far-right president on track to lose.
Bolsonaro, whose popularity is at an all-time low, is seeking to fire up his base and flex his political muscle in the face of a flagging economy, soaring unemployment and inflation, and a series of investigations targeting him and his inner circle.
With hardline supporters urging a military intervention to give Bolsonaro unfettered power, there are fears the day’s rallies could turn violent, with echoes of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in support of former president Donald Trump – to whom Bolsonaro is often compared.
The Supreme Court has notably ordered an investigation of Bolsonaro and his inner circle over allegations of systematically spreading fake news from within the government.
The president also faces a Senate inquiry into his government’s widely criticised handling of COVID-19, which has claimed more than 580,000 lives in Brazil, second only to the United States.
Indigenous people gathered in Brasilia for a 10-day protest camp demanding better protection for their land and rights.
Thousands of Indigenous people have marched in Brazil’s capital to press Congress not to pass legislation proposed by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government that would open their protected lands to commercial mining and agriculture.
According to the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), some 6,000 people from 176 different groups marched on Wednesday towards the National Congress in Brasilia as part of a 10-day annual protest demanding the protection of Indigenous land and rights.
Chanting and holding signs criticising Bolsonaro, participants called for more Indigenous representation in the parliament, where there are currently no Indigenous elected officials.
Although we may be unaware of it (or choose to rebel against it) we tend to observe codes of pedestrian conduct – keeping to the right, passing on the left, respecting personal space and not barging straight through people. Now, engineers at MIT have designed an autonomous robot that can do the same.
In tests, the knee-high robot, which runs on wheels, managed to avoid colliding with pedestrians while keeping up with their pace. In order to allow the robot to plan its movement, the team fitted sensors, including a webcam, a depth sensor and a lidar sensor. The robot was trained using reinforcement learning, involving computer simulations, to identify the optimum path through a crowd.
Yu Fan “Steven” Chen, lead author of the study, commented, ‘Socially aware navigation is a central capability for mobile robots operating in environments that require frequent interactions with pedestrians […] For instance, small robots could operate on sidewalks for package and food delivery. Similarly, personal mobility devices could transport people in large, crowded spaces, such as shopping malls, airports, and hospitals.’
Details of the robot will be outlined in a paper presented at the IEEE Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in September.
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Brazil is known as one of South America’s most gay-friendly countries with advanced legal rights for LGBT people including equal age of consent, health benefits, immigration equality, the right to change legal gender, anti-homophobia laws, and most recently in May 2013, same-sex marriages were made legal nationwide. Brazil is a very diverse country and a popular holiday hotspot for many people,…
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