Brazil News

Activists are warning that a proposed revamp of Brazil’s tough environmental law could roll back historic gains in the fight against Amazon deforestation by opening parts of the rainforest to farming and increasing impunity for violators. Brazil’s agricultural lobby, which has maintained a decade-long fight for changes to the country’s Forest Code, contends the bill would make pragmatic changes to an overly strict law that is unfair to farmers and ranchers.

The bill was approved by Brazil’s Senate in December and is expected to be easily passed by the lower house of Congress on Tuesday. It would then go to President Dilma Rousseff, who has said she opposes parts of the reform and has promised to use her line-item veto powers on the proposed legislation.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff on Tuesday launched an initiative to deepen ties with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after meeting Monday at the White House with President Barack Obama, Rousseff continued her short visit to the United States with meetings in the Boston area where MIT is based.

“For Brazil it’s very important what we are doing here,” she said in an appearance with MIT president Susan Hockfield to announce an education initiative she said will be sure to grow further.

The Brazilian government said construction at 2014 World Cup stadiums is on schedule in all 12 host cities.

With 800 days to go until the World Cup, the government said Tuesday that five stadiums have more than 50 percent of work completed, while another five have more than 30 percent of construction ready. Two are just 20 percent completed – the Beira-Rio stadium in the southern city of Porto Alegre and the Arena das Dunas in northeastern Natal.

President Dilma Rousseff will try to quell a rebellion among Brazilian legislators by releasing some frozen funds for their pet projects, sources told Reuters, hoping that will convince them to pass critical legislation for the 2014 World Cup and other bills related to the economy.

Rousseff has struggled since taking office last year with unrest among the 17 parties that make up her coalition in Congress. The latest conflict followed Rousseff’s decision to freeze about $30 billion in funds in this year’s budget, a move which she hoped would contain inflation while allowing Brazil’s high interest rates to keep falling in coming months.

Brazilian prosecutors Tuesday unveiled the first criminal charges for crimes committed during the two-decade military dictatorship which ended almost a quarter of a century ago.

Army colonel Sebastiao Curio Rodrigues de Moura, better known as “Dr Luchini,” was charged over the unresolved kidnapping of five militants captured during a crackdown on leftist guerrillas in the 1970s and still missing today, prosecutor Tiago Rabelo told a press conference.

The Anglican bishop for Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco was killed along with his wife, law enforcement officials in the state capital of Recife said Tuesday, and their son is the chief suspect. More >

Current and former police officers may have committed up to 30 murders during the recently ended police strike in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, law enforcement officials there said.

Up to 30 people were killed execution-style out of the 180 murdered during violence that hit the state during the 12-day strike, said Arthur Gallas, head of the police department’s homicide department, during a late Monday briefing for reporters.

Visiting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff refused to criticize this communist-ruled nation’s human rights record here Tuesday, saying the issue should not be used to score ideological points. “One should sweep one’s own house before criticizing others. We in Brazil also have (human rights problems). Therefore I am willing to discuss human rights from a multilateral perspective,” she told reporters before conferring with President Raul Castro.

Rousseff stressed that human rights should not be “a weapon for ideological political warfare.”

Health regulators said they will stop imports of orange juice from top grower Brazil if they test positive for an illegal fungicide, sending orange juice futures soaring on Tuesday to an all-time high. More >

Economists trimmed forecasts for inflation in Brazil next year to the lowest level in more than three months, a central bank weekly survey showed on Monday, as a deteriorating global economy helps ease price pressures.

Forecasts for Brazil’s benchmark inflation rate in 2012 fell to 5.33 percent from 5.39 percent previously, down for the fourth week in a row, according to the central bank’s Focus survey for the week ending December 23. The central bank expects inflation at 4.7 percent next year.