Fears of an economic slump under another leftist government led by an ‘unrepentant’ Lula da Silva may prompt Brazilians to reelect authoritarian President Jair Bolsonaro for a second term next year.
Tag: Dilma Rousseff
BRASILIA — There’s always something a bit risqué about Brazil’s many short-stay “motels,” where couples can pay by the hour and aren’t all that concerned, usually, with getting a good night’s sleep. But even by those standards, Room 8 in Brasilia’s Altana Motel stands out. Fitted with metal bars on the door and around the […]
Categories
Seoul Corruption And Female Power
-Analysis- It’s just a coincidence, but the symbolism is too hard to ignore. Two days ago, as every year on March 8, the world was celebrating women for, among other things, their “economic” and “political achievements.” Earlier today, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that President Park Geun-hye must be removed from office over a corruption […]
It was always going to be a tricky nomination. Still, Brazilian President Michel Temer could hardly have made a more controversial choice for the vacant seat on the nation’s Supreme Court. With anti-corruption investigation Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) still very much at the center of national debate, giving the nod to his close ally and […]
Little is known of what Dilma’s successor actually plans to do to lift Brazil out of its crisis. Temer, whose career has been defined by discretion, must now show his hand.
Categories
Shifting Relations In The Americas
Donald Trump dominated global headlines once again this morning after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City, and later reaffirming his hardline stance on immigration in a speech in Phoenix, Arizona. In front of a cheering crowd, the Republican presidential candidate delivered enough anti-immigrant applause lines for his supporters’ hands to get […]
Categories
A New Kind Of Space Race
The quest for the final frontier is still very much on. But rather than the Cold War-era space race between the two governments of the United States and Soviet Union, the competition now has many players, both public and private. The public sector these days includes China, which recently announced plans to send an unmanned […]
Categories
Lost In Brazil, Dilma Can Wait
SPOTLIGHT: LOST IN BRAZIL, DILMA CAN WAIT Brazil has won its first gold medal in Rio (courtesy of judoka Rafaela Silva), and other national athletes — especially soccer players after the 2014 World Cup fiasco — will obviously be looking to add to that tally. But one area where the hosts certainly won’t be claiming […]
Categories
Dirty Brazil, Brexit Surge, Kiwis & Avocados
SPOTLIGHT: BRAZIL, THE LONG ARM OF PETROBRAS PROBE Five weeks. That’s all it took for Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer to become directly implicated in the far-reaching Petrobras corruption scandal. Of course, there had been warning signs. First the resignation of two of his ministers amid allegations they were trying to subvert the ongoing probe. […]
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party always liked to think of itself as a crusader for the poor. Yet in the wake of the party’s 13 years in power, there are still 73,327,179 citizens living below the poverty line in the country — a staggering 36% of the population. Don’t take it from […]
KABUL SUICIDE ATTACK KILLS DOZENS A powerful explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed at least 28 people this morning, AP quotes a government official as saying. According to the BBC, the suicide blast from a vehicle injured at least 329 people, some critically. Gunmen then stormed the area, and some news outlets are reporting that a […]
DILMA LOSES IMPEACHMENT VOTE More than the necessary two-thirds of the Brazilian lower house of Congress voted in favor of starting impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff. O Globo reports on yesterday’s momentous proceedings, as Brazil’s first woman president faces accusations that she manipulated budget figures to secure her reelection in late 2014. A total […]
Categories
Impeachment! On Brazilian Front Page
Folha de S. Paulo, April 18, 2016 “Impeachment!” reads the front page of leading Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo on Monday, a day after Brazil’s lower house of Parliament voted in favor of starting impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff. The embattled president faces accusations that she manipulated budget figures to secure her reelection […]
Regardless of when or how she exits the political stage, the Brazilian president will leave chaos in her wake.
ARE DILMA’S DAYS NUMBERED? Photo: Agencia Estado/Xinhua/ZUMA Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will face what promises to be a dramatic impeachment after a committee in Brazil’s lower house voted in favor of removing her from office last night. Folha de S.Paulo reports that the committee panel vote came after an investigation into accusations that Rousseff had […]
PANAMA PAPERS, THE CHINESE CONNECTION The latest revelations to emerge from the Panama Papers focus on the family members of top China Communist Party members, including the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping, Bo Xilai’s wife and a distant relative of Mao Zedong. According to The Guardian, these relatives are part of China’s “red nobility,” “whose […]
Categories
Lonely Dilma, Hijackass, Pope’s Fiat
MYANMAR PRESIDENT SWORN-IN Htin Kyaw has been sworn in as Myanmar’s first elected civilian president in more than 50 years. In his first address as president, the 69-year-old, a close aide to Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, promised “national reconciliation” and a new Constitution guaranteeing a federal democracy and “the lifting up […]
BROTHERS IDENTIFIED AS BRUSSELS BOMBERS Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/ZUMA Two of the bombers who carried out yesterday’s deadly attacks in Brussels have been identified as brothers with criminal records and links to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, according to Belgian media. Brussels daily Le Soir reports that the brothers were identified as 27-year-old Khalid […]
N. KOREA FIRES MORE MISSILES North Korea fired a pair of ballistic missiles today from its eastern coast, the latest in a series of provocations that included a nuclear detonation in January and the launch, last month, of a long-range rocket. BRAZIL IMBROGLIO Brazil is barreling toward a full-blown constitutional crisis over President Dilma Rousseff’s […]
Categories
Brazil Unrest, GOP Digs In, Happy Denmark
TURKEY REFUGEE DEAL TOPS EU SUMMIT European Union leaders are gathering today to discuss a controversial deal with Turkey aimed at easing the ongoing refugee crisis. Negotiations are likely to be tough in Brussels, with European Council President Donald Tusk acknowledging a “catalogue of issues” still unresolved, the BBC reports. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu […]
O Globo, March 14, 2016 “Brazil takes to the streets against Dilma and Lula and in favor of Moro,” Rio-based daily O Globo writes on its front page Monday, a day after an estimated 3.6 million Brazilians protested recession and corruption and called for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Sao Paulo’s Avenida Paulista (pictured […]
Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was detained as part of a widespread corruption scandal at state oil giant Petrobras. But the probe could actually prove to be the spark to help him succeed Dilma Rousseff.
ISIS STRIKES BACK, BUT FAILS More than 300 ISIS fighters launched a vast attack against Kurdish forces in several locations near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, but their assault was repelled by the Kurdish fighters backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, The Washington Post reports. At least 180 jihadist fighters are reported to have been killed […]
FINAL BATACLAN ATTACKER IDENTIFIED The last of the three suicide attackers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, where 90 people were killed on Nov. 13, has been identified as Foued Mohamed-Aggad, a 23-year-old man from Strasbourg, in eastern France, Le Parisien quotes French authorities as revealing Wednesday. TALIBAN KILL 22 IN AFGHAN AIRPORT, HOLD […]
The speaker of Brazil’s lowest house of Parliament, Eduardo Cunha, has initiated impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff. The political showdown between two leaders described as “arch enemies” was put in stark terms on the Thursday edition of Portuguese-language Brazilian daily Correio, which used the English word “Impeachment” on the front page. Rousseff is facing […]
SAO PAULO — The mess that is Brazilian politics right now would make for a fantastic television drama series. Its intricate plots, combining power disputes and alliances concluded behind closed doors, would easily match those of Game of Thrones, except that the omnipresent blood would be replaced with dirty money. Ever since her reelection for […]
Faced with an economic downturn and corruption among state officials, the middle class is venting its fury at Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. But that may not be enough to oust her.
CHINESE ANGER GROWS AFTER EXPLOSIONS Families of firefighters who died battling the fires that followed last week’s massive explosions at a storage warehouse in the Chinese port city of Tianjin protested and clashed with police amid revelations that several hundred tons of poisonous cyanide were stored where the explosions took place, the South China Morning […]
Folha de S. Paulo, Aug. 17, 2015 Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets in cities across the country Sunday, calling for Dilma Rousseff’s resignation as the Brazilian president and her party face corruption allegations. “New protests keep Dilma under pressure; 135,000 demonstrate in Sao Paulo,” Monday’s Folha de S. Paulo“s front page […]
After doing business with both Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and China, Brazil’s space program is going back to where it started: NASA.
Lula da Silva spent liberally when the Brazilian economy was booming, leaving Dilma Rousseff to face the deferred impact of the global recession. His personal popularity aside, the country’s current woes are largely his fault.
Brazilians are furious as their personal prosperity slips away amid reports of runaway corrruption. All the while, President Rousseff looks forced to impose new austerity measures. Which way out?
President Rousseff has abandoned big spending projects in favor of currency devaluation to fuel exports. Will it save her presidency? And more importantly, this BRICS nation’s floundering economy?
BRASILIA — Not so many months ago, pollsters were saying she’d be Brazil’s next president. But now, three months after failing to make it to even the second round of the election, former Sen. Marina Silva is nowhere to be seen. The once high-flying candidate seems to have lost more than just a presidential race. […]
Revelations of massive corruption at Petrobras come with more than economic consequences. The credibility of the entire state is at stake. All eyes are on President Dilma Rousseff.
SAO PAULO — During my time in the early 1980s as a correspondent for Folha de S. Paulo in Buenos Aires, I covered more demonstrations of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” — and then of the “Grandmothers” — than I could count. Brave women, their faces furrowed by time and pain, their heads […]
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff edged out reelection, thanks in part to her charismatic predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. What role will he seek in her second term? Is he preparing to run in 2018?
-OpEd- BOGOTA — The crucial question in Brazil’s presidential elections, set for Sunday, is whether or not the country will remain the political and economic third way it has become. Will this “alternative socialism” – distinct from various offerings from both the traditional political Right and Left – keep its standing in the world established […]
Brazil’s future looks bright regardless of who wins the presidential runoff. Why? Because its parties matter more than personalities, argues Argentina’s former ambassador in Brazil.
SAO PAULO – Nearly 3,000 years after King Solomon built the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem, Bishop Edir Macedo has inaugurated his own replica in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Drawing on Biblical depictions of the temple and archaeological findings, an extraordinarily elaborate shrine has come to life. It’s $300 million, a 74,000-square-meter building on 40 plots […]