#mod nise da silveira
Brazil Highway Police told to reinstate human rights classes after officers use car as gas chamber to kill mentally ill Black man
ALTThe Prosecutor General’s Office in Goiás requested that the Federal Highway Police (PRF) reinstate classes on human rights for officers, after three marshals in the northeastern state of Sergipe killed a 38-year-old man.
After being pulled over for riding a motorcycle without a helmet, Genivaldo Santos (who relatives say was mentally ill) was locked inside the trunk of a police car. Agents then threw a tear gas bomb inside — killing Mr. Santos by asphyxiation.
Prosecutors ask civil servants caught in illegal activities to retake the course, which should focus on policing techniques in approaching vulnerable groups, such as those with mental illnesses as well as black and peripheral populations.
Bolsonaro visits disaster zone after deadly Brazil rains
ALTPresident Jair Bolsonaro sent his condolences Monday to the families of 91 people who died in torrential rains in northeastern Brazil, as rescue workers continued a grim search for victims.
Releasing an updated toll, authorities said 26 people remained missing in the region around the city of Recife, where days of downpours triggered flooding and landslides that swept up virtually everything in their path.
Bolsonaro posted a video on Twitter that showed him flying in a helicopter over a disaster zone where brown floodwater still inundated large areas and gashes of mud scarred hillsides where houses once stood.
“I tried to land, but the pilots’ recommendation was that, given the instability of the soil, we could have an accident. So we decided against it,” the far-right president told a news conference.
The government has allocated a total of one billion reais ($210 million) in emergency and reconstruction funds, said Regional Development Minister Daniel Ferreira.
“The forecast is for more rain in the coming days. We urge people to respect the alerts issued by the authorities” and evacuate if necessary, the minister added.
IN PHOTOS: Brazil procession celebrates the Holy Spirit
ALTOver the course of nine days, a religious procession known as the Folia of the Divine Holy Spirit brings messages of faith and song to farms and villages across the countryside of Brazil’s Goias state.
Like a medieval caravan, the group framed by small red and white flags is comprised of more than 300 people, many of them on horseback.
The display celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ apostles after his crucifixion and has been performed for two centuries since it was first brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonizers. Once there, it was influenced by the cultures of Indigenous people and Black slaves.
As large areas of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest regenerate, the gains don’t last
ALTA total of 4.47 million hectares (11.05 million acres) of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest has regenerated naturally since 1985, but nearly a third of this area has been cleared again.
These “ephemeral” forest patches last less than eight years on average, a new study shows, raising concerns about the durability of efforts to recover deforested swaths of the Atlantic Forest.
Most of the regenerated forests that get cleared lie inside private properties, raising questions about how landowners can be persuaded not to cut this vegetation.
Brazil’s Lula holds double-digit advantage over Bolsonaro, says poll
Former left-wing president has 46 percent support compared with 32 percent for incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, new survey finds.
ALTBrazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is vying to unseat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the country’s October elections, has reclaimed a double-digit advantage over the far-right leader, according to a new poll.
The survey published on Monday by Instituto FSB found that 46 percent of voters said they support Lula, up from 41 percent in April, while support for Bolsonaro was unchanged from a month ago at 32 percent.
FSB director Marcelo Tokarski said Bolsonaro had gained ground in April after former Justice Minister Sergio Moro dropped out, but Lula saw a bump after Joao Doria, the former governor of Sao Paulo state, who ran as a centre-right candidate, threw in the towel last week.
“The surge in inflation, but mainly the expectation among most voters that prices will continue to rise in the next three months, has been a hurdle for Bolsonaro’s re-election plans,” Tokarski said.
Brazil allocates 166 MW of solar in A-4 auction
The Brazilian authorities awarded around 950 MW of renewables capacity in the nation’s latest auction, including 183 MW of wind, 400 MW of thermal capacity, and 189.5 MW of small-sized hydroelectric power. The final average price for solar came in at $0.0376/kWh.
ALTEmpresa de Pesquisa Energetica (EPE), a Brazilian government-run energy agency, allocated around 166 MW of PV capacity in its A-4 energy auction on Friday.
Overall, the EPE assigned around 950 MW of renewable energy capacity in the auction. This included 183 MW of wind power, 400 MW of thermal capacity, and 189.5 MW of small-sized hydroelectric power facilities.
The five solar projects in the procurement exercise are all located in the state of Pernambuco. Their average final price is BRL 178.24 ($37.6)/MWh.
Brazil investigates first suspected monkeypox case
ALTHealth officials in Rio Grande do Sul, Ceará, and Santa Catarina are monitoring what are the first suspected cases of monkeypox in the country.
The patient in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, reportedly arrived from a trip to Portugal on May 10 and began showing symptoms of an infection three days later, such as fever and body aches. By May 20, his skin broke out in a rash of flat red marks, typical of monkeypox.
Per the Health Ministry, all cases are considered to be isolated events.
Death toll from heavy rain in northeastern Brazil rises to 91
ALTResidents in Brazil's northeastern state of Pernambuco were bracing for more days of heavy rain after at least 91 people were killed as downpours triggered floods and landslides, according to the Civil Defense.
A further 26 people are still reported missing, said the Civil Defense on Twitter.
The state governor, Paulo Câmara, said that many more people could be unaccounted for.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro spoke to the press after visiting the area on Monday.
“Unfortunately, these catastrophes happen,” Bolsonaro said during a press conference, saying “similar problems” happened before in other cities affected by heavy floods.
“We flew over the affected area, tried to land but, following recommendation from the pilots, decided not to due to inconsistency of the soil,” Bolsonaro told reporters.
Since heavy rains began on Wednesday, nearly 4,000 have lost their houses, according to CNN Brasil. Fourteen municipalities have declared a state of emergency.
Brazil recommending Covid boosters to teenagers
ALTThe Brazilian Health Ministry is now recommending teenagers aged 12 to 17 take Covid boosters, according to an ordinance issued on Friday.
According to the government, the third shot must be administered four months after the second one — with preference for using the Pfizer vaccine, regardless of which immunizer was used for the first two doses. If there is a lack of shots, then the Sinovac vaccine must be used instead.
Black Mentally Ill Man Asphyxiated in Police Car in Brazil
ALTAnger and protests in Brazil have followed the death of a Black man who was gassed in police custody. After a traffic stop, officers in the city of Umbaúba put the man in the back of a police car, then set off a gas grenade, the Guardian reports. “Police officers turned a car into a gas chamber and executed a mentally ill man,” Renata Souza, a Black activist and politician, posted on Twitter. Highway police said in a statement that officers employed “immobilization techniques” and “instruments of minor offensive potential” when the man became aggressive. The funeral for Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, 38, was held Thursday.
Cargill’s bid to open new port in Brazil opposed by human rights, conservation groups
ALTAs one of the most powerful commodity traders in Brazil, Cargill Inc. has worked to expand its business while fending off criticism that it’s enabling the destruction of Amazon forests and savanna for soy farms.
The clearing of Brazil’s climate-moderating tropical forests and grasslands has escalated under nationalist President Jair Bolsonaro, and Cargill in 2019 announced it would fail to meet its pledge to halt deforestation in Brazil by the following year.
Now the Minnetonka-based agribusiness giant’s Brazil operations are being challenged again, this time by human rights activists with the backing of environmentalists.
Cargill has plans to build a new $150 million river port in northern Brazil to help handle its soy shipments. The land it acquired, however, sits on an island that’s long been home to a community of fishermen and acai gatherers who are descendants of former African slaves, and who hold special land rights in Brazil.
The residents have sued Cargill in federal court in Brazil, accusing the company of stealing their land, acquiring it through third parties bearing allegedly fake land titles. Others are named in the lawsuit, including public entities and the company that sold the land to Cargill.
The dispute centers on about 1.5 square miles of land in Abaetetuba, a city near the coast in the northern state of Pará.
Anti-TNF therapy for ulcerative colitis in Brazil: a comparative real-world national retrospective multicentric study from the Brazilian study group of IBD (GEDIIB)
ALTBackground
Anti-TNF therapy represented a landmark in medical treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC). There is lack of data on the efficacy and safety of these agents in Brazilian patients. The present study aimed to analyze rates of clinical and endoscopic remission comparatively, between adalimumab (ADA) and infliximab (IFX), in Brazilian patients with UC, and evaluate factors associated with clinical and endoscopic remission after 1 year of treatment.
Methods
A national retrospective multicenter study (24 centers) was performed including patients with UC treated with anti-TNF therapy. Outcomes as clinical response and remission, endoscopic remission and secondary loss of response were measured in different time points of the follow-up. Baseline predictive factors of clinical and endoscopic remission at week 52 were evaluated using logistic regression model. Indirect comparisons among groups (ADA and IFX) were performed using Student’s t, Pearson χ2 or Fisher’s exact test when appropriated, and Kaplan Meier analysis.
Results
Overall, 393 patients were included (ADA, n = 111; IFX, n = 282). The mean age was 41.86 ± 13.60 years, 61.58% were female, most patients had extensive colitis (62.40%) and 19.39% had previous exposure to a biological agent. Overall, clinical remission rate was 66.78%, 71.62% and 82.82% at weeks 8, 26 and 52, respectively. Remission rates were higher in the IFX group at weeks 26 (75.12% vs. 62.65%, p < 0.0001) and 52 (65.24% vs. 51.35%, p < 0.0001) when compared to ADA. According to Kaplan–Meier survival curve loss of response was less frequent in the Infliximab compared to Adalimumab group (p = 0.001). Overall, endoscopic remission was observed in 50% of patients at week 26 and in 65.98% at week 52, with no difference between the groups (p = 0.114). Colectomy was performed in 23 patients (5.99%). Age, non-prior exposure to biological therapy, use of IFX and endoscopic remission at week 26 were associated with clinical remission after 52 weeks. Variables associated with endoscopic remission were non-prior exposure to biological therapy, and clinical and endoscopic remission at week 26.
Conclusions
IFX was associated with higher rates of clinical remission after 1 year in comparison to ADA. Non-prior exposure to biological therapy and early response to anti-TNF treatment were associated with higher rates of clinical and endoscopic remission.
At least 44 dead, 56 missing in Brazil downpours
ALTTorrential rains in northeastern Brazil have left at least 44 people dead and dozens missing, the government said Sunday, as rescuers capitalised on a lull in downpours to search for survivors.
“We registered 44 dead, 56 missing, 25 injured, 3,957 without shelter and 533 displaced,” Minister of Regional Development Daniel Ferreira told a press conference in Recife, the capital of hard-hit northeastern Pernambuco state.
The disaster is the latest in a recent series of deadly landslides and floods triggered by extreme weather in Brazil.
The number of dead had mounted from 34 since Saturday, with at least 28 killed in landslides, as heavy rains caused rivers to overflow and torrents of mud swept away everything in their path.
Authorities warned that heavy rain was forecast to continue Sunday, but the storm subsided in the morning.
Experts say Brazil’s rainy season downpours are being augmented by La Nina – the cyclical cooling of the Pacific Ocean – and by climate change.
Brazil: Thousands arrested in massive drug clampdown
ALTOver 2,800 people have been detained across the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo in the ongoing anti-crime operation dubbed “Choke” (Sufoco).
Officials in Sao Paulo on Sunday reported seizing 22 tons of drugs, recovering 427 stolen or missing vehicles, and arresting 2,800 people in the first 24 days of “Operation Choke” — a massive anti-crime effort focused primarily on Brazil’s largest city and the surrounding area.
According to the state government, highway police also managed to recover 22 tons of stolen iron on Friday.
Operation “Choke” or “Sufoco” in Portuguese was launched in early May to clamp down on crimes in the city of 12 million, with both normal and military police taking part in the effort. The authorities nearly doubled the number of security forces on the streets of from 5,000 to 9,700. The clampdown has no end date.
Drone Video Shows Destruction From Heavy Floods in Brazil
Drone footage shows destroyed houses and a mountain hit by a landslide after heavy rainfall caused deadly flooding in northeastern Brazil over the weekend.
Protests in Brazil after police kill Black man
ALTA wave of protests has swept Brazil, sparked by the brutal death of a Black man at the hands of police. The 38-year-old died of asphyxiation after he was held inside the trunk of a police car as it filled with tear gas.
Heavy rain kills 56 in northeast Brazil
ALTAt least 56 people have died in Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco amid heavy rains over the weekend, according to the state’s civil defense forces.
An additional 56 people are missing and at least 25 are injured, Brazil’s Minister of Regional Development Daniel Ferreira said on Sunday.
More than 3,900 people have also lost their homes due to devastating downpours, Ferreira added.
Some of the deaths were caused by landslides in the greater Recife area, said the Pernambuco civil defense, which has urged residents living in high risk areas to seek shelter elsewhere.
A doll brings pride, identity for Brazil Indigenous woman
ALTLuakam Anambé wanted her newborn granddaughter to have a doll — something she’d never owned as a child working in slave-like conditions in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. But she wanted the doll to share their Indigenous features, and there was nothing like that in stores. So she sewed one herself from cloth and stuffing.
The doll had brown skin, long, dark hair, and the same face and body paint used by the Anambé people. It delighted passersby; while Indigenous dolls can be found elsewhere in Latin America, they remain mostly absent in Brazil, home to nearly 900,000 people identifying as Indigenous in the last census.
A business idea was born, and her modest home now doubles as a workshop where she and her daughter produce dolls for a growing clientele.
“Before, only white dolls existed, then came the Black ones, but Indigenous ones didn’t appear,” said Anambé, 53, wearing a beaded necklace and a headdress of delicate orange feathers. “When Indigenous women see the dolls, they sometimes cry.”
Since 2013, Anambé has sold more than 5,000 dolls at local fairs and through social media, mailing them across the country, and she is fundraising to attend a German fair with the aim of exporting to Europe. Her burgeoning business in Rio de Janeiro is a world removed from the Amazonian state of Para, where her life of hardship began.
Brazil’s Yellow Fever Vaccinations Need Boosting
ALTThe Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Region of the Americas recently reported that Brazil’s ongoing yellow fever virus battle shows unfortunate results.
In Brazil, between July 2021 and week# 18 of 2022, there were 547 suspected cases of yellow fever in humans were reported, of which four were laboratory-confirmed and fatal.
The fatal cases were men between 20 and 29 years of age with no history of yellow fever vaccination.
The PAHO says the COVID-19 pandemic cause a significant disruption in yellow fever vaccination in Brazil.
Death toll in Brazilian floods rises to 57, thousands displaced
ALTMore than 100 people are missing or confirmed dead in Brazil, the government said on Sunday, as mudslides and major floods brought about by heavy rains tore through several urban neighbourhoods in the north-eastern part of the country.
It was the fourth major flooding event in five months, underlining a lack of urban planning in low-income neighbourhoods throughout much of Brazil, where shantytowns are often built on hillsides prone to collapse. The destruction also comes as scientists begin to question whether abnormal rain cycles in Latin America’s largest nation could be a result of climate change.
As of Sunday afternoon, 56 people had died in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco and one died in the neighbouring state of Alagoas, according to a message posted on Twitter by the Federal Civil Defense service, which is in charge of emergency management. Another 56 people in Pernambuco were missing.
