Worldcrunch
Estado de Minas“s Aug. 23 front page Pegou Fogo. “On Fire.” Belo Horizonte-based daily Estado de Minas chose this straightforward, yet impactful title for its Friday edition, letting the dramatic photograph of Amazon rainforest burning tell the story. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reports that forest fires have increased by 84% this year […]
Brazilian President Bolsonaro is wrong to think rainforest destruction is purely an internal matter. The patrimony of the natural world is at stake.
Brazil’s President Bolsonaro tells Argentine daily Clarín that, in contrast with his populist profile, he wants to liberalize the economy and forge free-trade pacts across the world.
“In Japan, white is the color of mourning.” So wrote Samuel French in his play All the Way Home. Or at least that’s the line as I remember it from my high-school theater days. White is also the color that the Brazilian national soccer team was wearing in the infamous “Maracanazo” match, a decisive showdown […]
The increasingly unpopular president is collaborating with dozens of current or retired soldiers as he tries to push through a controversial policy agenda.
The white supremacist who killed 50 at New Zealand mosques is like other mass killers attached to myths of ideological identity that lack any real political horizon.
Fruit vendors were a common sight when we drove through Brazil“s Minas Gerais state. My wife Claudine didn’t have to wait long: It took this woman no longer than three minutes to expertly slice this fresh pineapple.
Belém“s Ver-o-Peso market, in the background of this photograph, is one of the largest open-air markets in Latin America. But when I came across this 26-year-old slide, it was the smell not the size that I remember most clearly.
-Analysis- PARIS — And then, Brazil. The list of countries that are switching to so-called “strongman” regimes keeps growing. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Narendra Modi’s India, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The “people” leave it up to a candidate who has promised the end of corruption and economic recovery. In […]
The tendency of politicians in Latin America (and beyond) to cite Christ in their speeches may indicate both megalomania and contempt for institutional democracy.
President-elects Jair Bolsonaro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador may not have the same ideology, but their respective radical declarations are prompting concerns over the rule of law and treatment of minorities.
With her Alibi series, Brazilian artist Alice Quaresma is pushing the boundaries of photography. Incorporating collage-like geometrical shapes into her images, she disrupts the traditional rigidity of static ocean views, and creates a playful, interactive journey somewhere between painting and photography. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/BURbfvZhNQU expand=1] Fisherman Eye — © Alice Quaresma / OneShot Alice Quaresma’s work was recently displayed at the seventh edition of UNSEEN Amsterdam. UNSEEN is now an all-year-round leading platform for contemporary photography. OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
You can travel the world for more than 60 years without being an aventurier, per se. Still, we got pretty close from the relative comfort of our Amazon cruise where we saw this passing moment of indigenous life in the Brazilian rainforest.
Jair Bolsonaro’s triumph in the first round of the presidential election is worrisome, but a simple response to economic hard times and a corrupt political class.
Jair Bolsonaro is threatening to curtail rights and liberties, and bring the army back into politics. He’s also the front-runner heading into Sunday’s presidential election.
On the waterfront of Salvador da Bahia, a fellow Frenchman was busy bargaining for a plate of Bahian acarajé. The body language of sidewalk commerce is understood all around the world.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Protests are expected to continue after the fire early Monday that largely destroyed Brazil’s National Museum. The public’s anger at the blaze, which is estimated to have destroyed nearly all of the 20 million works and artifacts at the Rio de Janeiro museum, comes amid rising economic and political unrest as […]
Ask anybody with a minimum of knowledge about either the sport or the country, and they’ll tell you that soccer in Brazil is like a religion. This truism becomes all the more true every four years, at the FIFA World Cup. But some of us also know that Brazil is a very religious country as […]
PARIS — Political conflict and social movements around the world in 1968 made it a year for the history books. The 50th anniversary of several signature episodes are being marked throughout this year, from the Prague Spring and monthlong French student uprising of May “68, to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy […]
Brazil’s imprisoned former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, writes an impassioned plea published by Le Monde, alongside a call by European leaders to Brazilian authorities to let Lula run for president in October.
-Analysis- The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Rarely has the old expression had as much global echo as it does this morning. Over the past 48 hours, no fewer than three former heads of state, in three different continents, have had to face judges over accusations of corruption. In Brazil, South America’s biggest […]
An estimated 40,000 Venezuelans have taken up residence in Boa Vista, the capital of Brazil’s Roraima state. Many are roughing it in the city’s 53 public squares. And their numbers are rising.
-Analysis- Good news for the people of Cape Town: “Day Zero,” when South Africa’s second most-populated city is expected to run out of water has been pushed back. But it’s only a very temporary reprieve. The city is now expected to go waterless — and confront all the chaos that it implies — on July […]
RIO DE JANEIRO — Every night at around 9 o’clock, Fabiana Escobar sits down in front of the TV and watches her life play out on the small screen: whether the police haul her away or her husband cheats on her again; how she beats up his lover; how the cocaine goes out and the […]
A court has upheld corruption charges against the former Brazilian president. Will it stop him from seeking to return to the presidency? He may get support from some surprising places.
Countries like France and Spain, already known for their inhabitants’ longevity, needed three times as long as Brazil to double their percentage of older population.
SERTÃOZINHO — In a simple house here, 330 kilometers northwest of São Paulo in Brazil, Glauber Pereira Souza, 36, is the head of a four-legged family: He owns five dogs, two cats and two rabbits. The youngest member of his household is Preta, a mongrel female who had been run over by a bus, but […]
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — The idea of economic planning dominated the imagination of 20th-century economists. Unlike the classical liberal view, the planning concept supports clear government intervention in the spontaneous course of markets. By implementing one plan or another, the theory goes, governments can speed up a process or correct a wrong course. Plans are […]
RECIFE — Caricatures can sometimes cross the line. But world leaders, who are always the center of attention, tend to get used to unflattering satirical portraits. But two former Brazilian Presidents embroiled in corruption scandals, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, have become targets of a different — literal — sort. As daily Folha de […]
The answer from Chinese professionals may surprise you…
The West is in relative decline, especially compared to Asia, but no obvious alternative ‘system’ has emerged.
Millions drive past the favela of Vila Esperança, with its rampant unemployment and open sewers. But thanks to a three-meter high concrete wall, they don’t see it.
RIO DE JANEIRO — “Stray bullets invading Rio’s schools.” “Under threat, schools are closing.” “Students injured in shooting.” These were titles of articles published by Folha de S. Paulo, respectively in 1996, 2003 and 2006. But they would fit in well with the current outbreak of violence in Rio de Janeiro. Of the first 100 […]
At low tide, the port of Belem, in northern Brazil, looked like a scene from The Birds. Blame it on the nearby Ver-o-Peso market — and the rotting remnants of fish the birds were feasting on. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Correio Braziliense, Aug. 3, 2017 Brazil’s President Michel Temer has survived a crucial vote in the lower house of Congress on whether he should be tried on allegations of corruption. The vote is a “victory” that “strengthens’ his position, Correio Braziliense writes on its front page Thursday. The newspaper features a striking image of one […]
It is the nature of the job, not the people who occupy it, that is ultimately to blame for an endless series of scandals at the top ranks of Brazilian politics.
High ticket prices and fancy stadiums are making the games of the national pastime off-limits for most of Brazil’s population.
-Analysis- The recapture of Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces, with the support of the international coalition led by the United States, is a real achievement. ISIS has seen its biggest military conquest reversed, and its dream of an Islamic caliphate destroyed. But none of this means that the biggest terror organization the world has […]
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — The G20, the club gathering the world’s biggest economies, is the offspring of two crises. First, the 1997 Asian financial crisis led to the creation of the group in 1999, as an annual summit for finance ministers and central bank governors. Their objective back then was to coordinate policies to stabilize […]
Not far from Belem, the gateway to the Amazon River, my wife and I (together with our fellow travelers from our organized tour of Brazil) stepped into the rainforest for a short walk — just enough to get a taste of it without having to fight off any anacondas. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s […]