Brazil - The African Mirror

Jul

2021

Brazil’s Bolsonaro shuffles cabinet, recreates labour ministry

ANTHONY BOADLE BRAZILIAN President Jair Bolsonaro has appointed centre-right Senator Ciro Nogueira as his chief of staff x to shore up waning political support in Congress and recreated the labour ministry to deal with record unemployment. Nogueira, a leader of the Progressives Party (PP) to which lower house speaker Arthur Lira also belongs, will be Bolsonaro's closest aide and minister, replacing a retired general. His appointment is aimed at improving the far-right president's relations with Congress, where there have been dozens of requests for his impeachment as his popularity drops during the world's second-deadliest COVID-19 outbreak. A Senate investigation has…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Foreign ministers of more than a dozen countries condemn mass arrests in Cuba

WORLD

THE foreign ministers of the United States and 20 other countries have condemned mass arrests in Cuba and called for full restoration of Internet access in the island nation that has recently been rocked by political unrest. The joint statement was issued by the governments of Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Guatemala, Greece, Honduras, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Republic of Korea, and Ukraine, alongside the United States. "Democracies around the world are coming together to support the Cuban people, calling on the Cuban government to respect Cubans' demands for universal human rights,"…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Nigeria bans travellers from India, Brazil, Turkey over COVID-19 fears

COVID-19

NIGERIA will ban travellers coming from India, Brazil and Turkey because of concerns about the rampant spread of coronavirus in those countries, a presidential committee has announced. "Non-Nigerian passport holders and non-residents who visited Brazil, India or Turkey within Fourteen (14) days preceding travel to Nigeria, shall be denied entry into Nigeria," Boss Mustapha, chairman of the presidential steering committee on COVID-19, said in a statement. The ban will take effect from May 4, the statement said. Nigeria announced 43 confirmed new coronavirus cases on Saturday, bringing its total to 165,153, with 2,063 deaths. Indian hospitals, morgues and crematoriums have…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

South African coronavirus variant detected in reinfection case in Brazil

COVID-19

RICARDO BRITO BRAZILIAN researchers have identified the concerning new coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa in a woman who contracted COVID-19 for the second time, and said it was the first such case reported in the world. There have been other cases of reinfection in Brazil and the South African variant had previously been detected, but reinfection with this mutation of the virus is believed to be a first, researchers said. The case involved a 45-year-old woman from the northeastern state of Bahia, researchers from the D'Or Research and Teaching Institute (IDOR) said, after carrying out a genetic sequencing…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

Brazil governors urge extension of COVID-19 emergency measures

WORLD

GOVERNORS from 17 Brazilian states urged President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday to extend a "state of public calamity" due to the COVID-19 pandemic now set to expire at the end of the year. Under the emergency measure, lawmakers are permitted to break certain budget rules as they prioritize addressing fallout from the pandemic. Brazil, which has the highest COVID-19 death toll in the world outside the United States, has been dealing with an increasingly severe second wave over the last month or so. "In this challenging moment in which we're seeing an increase in the number of cases of the…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

Brazil rolls out COVID-19 vaccination plan

WORLD

SABRINA VALLE THE Brazilian government has unveiled its long-awaited national vaccination plan against COVID-19 with an initial goal of vaccinating 51 million people, or about one-fourth of the population, in the first half of 2021. In a document sent to the Supreme Court, which had given the government a deadline to draw up the plan, the Health Ministry said 108 million doses will be available for priority vaccination of vulnerable groups that include health workers, elderly people and indigenous communities. The plan says 70% of the population - or about 148 million of Brazil's 212 million people - need to…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

Brazil looks for legal options to ban China’s Huawei from 5G – sources

WORLD

LISANDRA PARAGUASSU BRAZILIAN President Jair Bolsonaro's government is looking for a legal way to exclude Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd from 5G networks in Brazil, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. A presidential decree is being studied by Bolsonaro's national security adviser Augusto Heleno and the ministry of communications who are looking at security provisions that telecoms and their suppliers must comply with, the sources said. Bolsonaro, following his ally President Donald Trump, opposes Huawei on the unproven grounds that it shares confidential data with China's Communist government. But, with China being Brazil's largest trade…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

EXCLUSIVE: Children in Brazil found working for food delivery apps

WORLD

FABIO TEIXEIRA CASES of children working for food delivery apps in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic have been uncovered by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, with prosecutors vowing to investigate amid growing scrutiny of employment practices in the gig economy. Videos and posts on YouTube and Facebook and interviews with underage workers and researchers showed how Rappi, iFood, 99Food and Uber Eats had failed to stop child labor, with under-18s using older relatives' accounts or signing up under their names. School closures and job losses caused by the pandemic have driven more children to work in the informal economy, according to…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

In Brazil’s Amazon a COVID-19 resurgence dashes herd immunity hopes

WORLD

ANTHONY BOADLE THE largest city in Brazil's Amazon has closed bars and river beaches to contain a fresh surge of coronavirus cases, a trend that may dash theories that Manaus was one of the world's first places to reach collective, or herd, immunity. When a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease, its spread becomes unlikely. University of Sao Paulo researchers suggested that a drastic fall in COVID-19 deaths in Manaus pointed to collective immunity at work, but they also believe that antibodies to the disease after infection may not last more than a few months. Local…

Aug

2020

By The African Mirror

A PICTURE AND ITS STORY-The despair of a Rio widow, in a city struggling with violence

WORLD

FOR Ricardo Moraes, a veteran photographer who for 11 years has documented for Reuters life in Rio de Janeiro's often dangerous cinderblock slums known as "favelas", work began at about 6 a.m. on Thursday, when he heard a radio report of a hostage situation in Sao Carlos, a sprawling tangle of hillside homes near the city centre. The images he would capture - a young woman, kneeling over her husband's body, overcome with grief and surrounded by heavily armed police - ultimately would appear on the front pages of Brazil's two largest newspapers. They resonated in a city fed up…