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by Alexandria SAGE with Jordi MIRO in Brasilia ROME, Italy (AFP) — Italian prosecutors and police on Tuesday cheered the capture in Brazil of a leading mafia boss who has skirted justice in Italy for nearly 30 years. Rocco Morabito, number two on the Italian interior ministry’s most dangerous fugitives list, was arrested Monday in northeast Brazil. His capture came almost two years after his audacious escape from a prison in Uruguay, where he was […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll surpassed 450,000 on Tuesday, as delays plague the hard-hit country’s vaccine rollout and epidemiologists warned a brutal new surge of the virus could be coming. The health ministry reported 2,173 deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the official number of lives lost to the coronavirus in Brazil to 452,031, second only to the United States. The situation has stabilized somewhat, with an average of […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil has detected its first six cases of the so-called Indian variant of the Covid-19 virus, in crew members who arrived aboard a Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship, officials said Thursday. Tests “identified the B.1.617.2 variant of the Covid-19 virus in samples taken from crew of the MV Shandong Da Zhi,” which arrived from South Africa, the health ministry for the northeastern state of Maranhao said in a statement. “In […]
by Louis GENOT RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Four months into a Covid-19 vaccination campaign marred by shortages and delays, hard-hit Brazil is still struggling to find enough doses, as political and diplomatic blunders prolong its pandemic nightmare. Around 33 million people — 15 percent of the population — have received at least one vaccine dose in Brazil, a proportion still too small to have a substantial impact on the virus’ spread. Targeted by […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil will begin vaccinating Olympic athletes and other members of its Tokyo-bound delegation against Covid-19 this week, officials said Tuesday. The hard-hit South American country is struggling to secure enough vaccines for its 212 million people, but will be able to immunize its Olympians thanks to donated doses from pharmaceutical companies, health officials said. Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga told a news conference that 1,814 members of the delegation would be […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon hit a record last month, the government reported Friday with figures that belie President Jair Bolsonaro’s pledge to crack down on such destruction. The area of the rainforest that was destroyed — 580 square kilometers (225 square miles) — marked a new high for the month of April and a 42.5 percent on-year rise, according to satellite monitoring by the Brazilian space agency INPE. […]
by Mauro PIMENTEL RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — A massive police operation against drug traffickers in a Brazilian favela Thursday left 25 people dead, turning the impoverished Rio de Janeiro neighborhood into a battlefield and drawing condemnation from rights groups. A policeman was among those killed in the early morning raid on Jacarezinho, on Rio’s north side, where residents awoke to explosions, heavy gunfire and helicopters overhead. Police confirmed the toll — and investigators […]
SAUDADES, Brazil (AFP) — An 18-year-old attacker armed with a samurai-style sword burst into a daycare center in Brazil Tuesday and killed three children and two staff, local police said, leaving the small southern town in shock. The attacker then turned his weapon on himself, gashing his own neck, abdomen and torso, said authorities in Saudades, a town of 10,000 people in Santa Catarina state. “He was taken to the hospital in critical condition,” police […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Shortages of Covid-19 vaccines have forced several large Brazilian cities to suspend administering second doses, officials and media reports said Monday, the latest breakdown in the hard-hit country’s troubled immunization drive. Seven of Brazil’s 26 state capitals have stopped administering the booster shot of Chinese-developed CoronaVac because of a lack of supply, according to news site G1. And Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second city, announced Saturday it was halting […]
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) — Several thousand Brazilians marched Saturday in support of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, ignoring a surging pandemic even as government opponents took their own protests online. There were rallies in Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with many demonstrators wearing the yellow, blue and green of the country’s flag. Brazil, with more than 403,000 Covid-19 deaths, is second only to the United States in that grim category, and Bolsonaro faces […]
by Valeria PACHECO / with Andrea PALASCIANO in Moscow BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s health regulator said Thursday its decision to reject the Russian-made Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine was based on the developer’s own data, after the latter threatened to sue for defamation. Brazilian regulators’ decision Monday to deny emergency use authorization for the vaccine has blown up into an all-out international row, with Sputnik V’s makers accusing them of “knowingly spreading false and inaccurate […]
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s death toll in the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 400,000 Thursday, as the country struggled to secure enough vaccines and the Senate investigated whether President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has exacerbated the crisis. The health ministry reported 3,001 Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing Brazil’s overall toll to 401,186 — second only to the United States. With 212 million people, the South American giant also has one of the highest mortality […]
