Forest clearance at smallest total since records began in 1988 in success for Lula ahead of presidential run-off

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began, new government data shows.

But whether this globally important success is maintained or reversed is on a knife edge ahead of a presidential election run-off on 25 October between two candidates with sharply different visions for the future of the rainforest and how that affects relations with the US under Donald Trump.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Edmar Barros/AP

© Photograph: Edmar Barros/AP

© Photograph: Edmar Barros/AP

Lula reverses position on age of responsibility for ‘heinous’ crimes in what many see as a desperate electoral gambit

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced that he now supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility for “heinous” crimes from 18 to 16, reversing a longstanding policy in what is widely seen as a desperate electoral gambit.

The U-turn, which Lula announced during a Thursday night interview with TV Globo, comes with the presidential runoff in just over a week. The incumbent faces an uphill battle to overturn the first-round victory of his opponent, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who remains slightly ahead at the polls.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ton Molina/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ton Molina/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ton Molina/Getty Images

Iguazu Falls, an Unesco world heritage site, has reached a record water flow after heavy rains across the river basin. El Niño weather patterns are said to have driven the water flow to hit 10 times the normal amount. Usually the water flow is 1.5m litres per second, but local government registered a flow of 15m litres of water per second.

• Argentina temporarily closes Iguazu Falls after El Niño-fuelled surge in water levels

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Reuters

© Photograph: Reuters

© Photograph: Reuters

Congress approves constitutional amendment that bans six-day workweeks, which could effect up to 30 million

Brazil’s congress has approved a constitutional amendment to shorten the working week to a maximum of 40 hours, a move that could affect 30 million workers and that will hand a political victory to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the presidential runoff in under two weeks.

In an attempt to overturn the first-round lead secured by his opponent, far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula has strongly championed the amendment, which will give some workers an extra day off each week.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: André Borges/EPA

© Photograph: André Borges/EPA

© Photograph: André Borges/EPA

Xi's 'death watch' will become a global spectacle - "Xi will have to pick a relative unknown — all the current members of the Politburo Standing Committee are too old to step into his shoes — raising a host of troubling questions. Would a designated successor catapulted to the top be strong enough to command the loyalty of the powerful military? Could he hold the Party together?"

China now faces a period of prolonged political uncertainty. Carl Minzner, a US legal scholar and senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted a "long twilight" with the economy sagging, social discontent rising, and the state using "grid management" — surveillance techniques used to maintain control over Xinjiang and other restive border areas. A succession struggle is unlikely to remain within China's borders, Tyler Jost, a professor at Brown University, and Daniel Mattingly of Yale University argued in Foreign Affairs last year, noting that Xi's prize goal is unification with Taiwan and "if he hears the succession clock ticking, he could become more willing to gamble on war." I'm betting that the end of the Xi era will look a lot less like Deng's, whose passing created hardly a ripple — by then, he'd handed over power and put in place a system to ensure smooth leadership transfers — and more like Mao's, a drama that involved a bloodless coup (the arrest of the so-called "Gang of Four" led by Mao's widow), intervention by the People's Liberation Army, and show trials. We had a foretaste of this kind of turmoil when Xi took power in 2012. A carefully constructed power transfer was upended by the arrest of Xi's main Politburo rival, and there were wild internet rumors of a military coup, tanks in the streets of the Chinese capital, and gunfire near the leadership compound. Xi has wrenched China back to an era of one-man rule. But having attained the pinnacle of power — next year he'll likely get a fourth five-year term in office — Xi now has to reckon with the consequences for his country. As Deng himself warned, "building a nation's fate on the reputation of one or two people is very unhealthy and very dangerous. --- *Notable:

• In 2025, during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing, a hot mic picked up a conversation between Putin and Xi in which the two discussed organ transplants and the possibility of living forever. Musing on such procedures, Putin told Xi (through a translator) that with modern technology organs could be transplanted again and again so that "(you can) even achieve immortality." While a largely hypothetical conversation, it hinted that staving off old age and death — maybe for eternity — is top of mind among the world's most powerful autocrats.

As America Retreats, a New Era of Autocratic Surveillance Advances [ungated] - "A crackdown in Uganda shows how new technologies, Chinese influence and America's moral retreat are making the world safer for autocrats."[1]

Ugandans have discovered that, increasingly, there is nowhere to hide. Civic life here is defined by thickening webs of state surveillance built with foreign help. Chinese cameras and facial-recognition software monitor the streets; Russian radio frequency chips implanted in license plates have been tracking cars in real time; Israeli software plunders the private contents of phones. Technology has created an intrusive eye that never blinks — a stealthy weapon for dictators keen to stifle speech and thought. Welcome to our menacing new world, a place where authoritarians — established and aspiring alike — enjoy tolerance from the international community; wield cheaper, quieter and far more powerful surveillance tools at home; and reach across borders to help one another hang on to power.

viz. @EdwardGLuce: "Another US president would be pressuring Russia to stop slaughtering innocents. Trump is instead giving them the means to kill more."

• Iran Has a Secret Weapon in Its War With America: Help From China - "Trump wants to preserve relations with Xi, but Iranian customs data show Chinese entities have made thousands of shipments of components used in drones and missiles."
• The Houthis Are Building an Advanced Missile With Chinese Parts - "New report shows how Yemeni militant group is developing medium-range weapons independently of Iran."

cf. China's growth machines - "China is not the world's largest command economy. It is a continent-sized Silicon Valley."[2]

• @RuxandraTeslo: "Chinese industrial success is... because properly incentivised local governments compete ruthlessly with each other to secure investment."
• @bswud: "Whereas many of the West's most important city governments capture only a small amount of the spillovers from successful clusters, and thus have very little reason to foster them, in China, they get a huge amount of the upside and can re-invest it in further growth."
• @kyleichan: "It's useful to think of the Chinese Party-state as a giant corporation..."

also btw... Brazil's racket society - "As Bolsonarismo outlives Bolsonaro, what does Brazil reveal about where politics everywhere is heading?" (via|previously)

As Latin America's largest economy and its most populous democracy, Brazil has long served as a bellwether for the region, and increasingly for the world. Analysts of neoliberalism have used "Brazilianization" to describe a future of informal work, fortified elites, and hollowed-out states that they see arriving in the global North. The outcome of the runoff will help decide whether Brazil holds out against a regional turn toward Trump-aligned strongmen, a wave that has already swept Argentina, Ecuador, and, most recently, Colombia. The stakes are high. Lula's third term delivered growth, rising wages, and record-low unemployment, but it was hemmed in by a hostile Congress, and household debt and the cost of living kept climbing. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has intervened with unusual openness. It has imposed punitive tariffs and sanctioned a Supreme Court justice, and it has designated Brazil's two largest criminal factions as terrorist organizations. As Benjamin Fogel wrote in Jacobin before the vote, "something deeper and more paradigmatic is going on" than ordinary frustration with an incumbent. In this conversation, editor William Shoki speaks with Fogel, the Deputy Director of the Alameda Institute, a historian of Brazil and contributing editor at Jacobin (as well as an alumnus of Africa Is a Country), to unpack the first-round results, the coalition of interests behind Flávio, and the political economy that makes it cohere. They discuss why Brazilian capital has made its peace with predation, why anti-corruption politics so often breeds cynicism, how "security slop" became the right's signature policy, and what Brazil and South Africa reveal about everyone else's future.

The judge who helped convict Jair Bolsonaro is caught up in a crisis that could benefit his son and damage Lula

• Marina Silva on Flávio Bolsonaro: He will try to finish his father’s ‘perverse project’ to destroy the Amazon

Thundering to a crowd of thousands of far-right supporters in São Paulo on 7 September, Brazil’s Independence Day, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro focused less on his opponent in the presidential election, the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, than on someone who is not running at all.

“Whoever votes for Lula is voting for Alexandre de Moraes,” Bolsonaro shouted, referring to the shaven-headed supreme court justice once described as “Voldemort” by Elon Musk.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Lucas Landau/AP

© Photograph: Lucas Landau/AP

© Photograph: Lucas Landau/AP

Cocaine seizures in Europe are up more than fivefold in 10 years as a host of cartels take root. A four-month Guardian investigation reveals the true scale of a continent-wide shift

A four-month investigation by the Guardian has revealed that the surge in cocaine trafficking to Europe is directly linked to the expanding presence of Latin American criminal networks in Europe, where they have forged close ties with local mafia organisations.

The investigation, utilising databases, police and intelligence agencies, along with interviews with judges, prosecutors and experts from eight countries, shows that cartels and factions from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the US are active in at least 12 European countries. Between 2014 and 2024, there was a 471% rise in the quantity of cocaine seized and more local laboratories processing cocaine derivatives were dismantled.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

Exclusive: Former Brazilian environment minister warns of destruction as far-right scion favourite to become president

The former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva has said that if Flávio Bolsonaro becomes president he will seek to finish the “perverse project” of rampant rainforest destruction initiated by his jailed far-right father.

The Amazon was thrown into chaos during Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 presidency, when Brazil’s environment and Indigenous protection agencies were gutted and environmental criminals ran riot, causing surges in deforestation and violence.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Sérgio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Sérgio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Sérgio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

Installation of eight canopy bridges in Alta Floresta has enabled 15,000 safe crossings by animals including spider monkeys and marmosets – and more bridges are planned elsewhere

By about 7am, with dense fog blanketing the landscape, Gabriel Falquetto had already come across several road-killed animals along the ES-164 highway in Brazil’s Espírito Santo state. The biologist was on his way to Kaetés private natural heritage reserve (RPPN) in the Atlantic Forest, where he monitors wildlife and roadkill.

Then he spotted the lifeless body of a primate on the pavement. It was a buffy-headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps), a species listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list. An estimated 2,500 individuals remain in the wild, making it one of the world’s most threatened primates.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Reconecta

© Photograph: Reconecta

© Photograph: Reconecta

Whether on the frontline in Ukraine or skate parks in Soweto, the genre is still a vital outlet for disaffected people everywhere. Here, musicians explain how they rage against the machine

Andriy Zholob, vocalist/guitarist, Beton: When MTV arrived in Ukraine, I heard Nirvana, the Offspring, Bad Brains, Social Distortion and thrash metal, and realised that all this started from punk rock. Our drummer and I were in a ska-punk band first, but when our vocalist became pregnant we started Beton in 2017 and played lots of festivals.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Jess Clark for the Guardian: Getty Images/ Katrīna Līva Dalbiņa, Alejandra Núñez, Assante Chiweshe, Ruslan Bulgakov, Valeriia Nekhvodiuk, Yulia Sachul

© Composite: Jess Clark for the Guardian: Getty Images/ Katrīna Līva Dalbiņa, Alejandra Núñez, Assante Chiweshe, Ruslan Bulgakov, Valeriia Nekhvodiuk, Yulia Sachul

© Composite: Jess Clark for the Guardian: Getty Images/ Katrīna Līva Dalbiņa, Alejandra Núñez, Assante Chiweshe, Ruslan Bulgakov, Valeriia Nekhvodiuk, Yulia Sachul

After a surprise first-round victory, critics suggest son of disgraced ex-president could seek to continue his father’s authoritarian project

• Flávio’s surprise first-round win highlights rapid rise of Brazil’s House of Bolsonaro

Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, has vowed to “re-democratise” the South American country, increasing fears about a move into authoritarian rule if he wins power.

Brazil was re-democratised in the 1980s after a brutal 21-year dictatorship that Flávio’s father, the disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has long praised.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: André Borges/EPA

© Photograph: André Borges/EPA

© Photograph: André Borges/EPA

A new study has identified two species of Brazilian birds, the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema, as the loudest in nature.

Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic: how far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.
This Sunday is the first round of the General Election in Brazil. Lula vs Fabio Bolsonaro.
The Arrest of a Bolsonaro Ally Revealed Trump & Rubio Techno-Fascist Meddling in Brazilian Elections.
This week, the National Conference of Bishops of Brasil lost access to its X account.
John Oliver: Yet again, Brazil finds itself having to choose between Lula and a guy named Bolsonaro for president, and many do not seem thrilled that those are their main choices,

A Datafolha poll indicates that Lula has 40% of voting intentions in the first round, compared with 36% for Flávio Bolsonaro. In the second round, there is a tie: the president has 47% and the senator, 45%. The margin of error is two percentage points, plus or minus. A Lula on the ground rally called at short notice. I want you to think about what work was done here by the previous government. What did the other presidents of the republic do here, in the history of Pernambuco?" he began. "I ask you, who created the SAMU (public ambulance system)?" "Lula!" answered the crowd. "Who created the Farmácia Popular [free prescription drug service]? Who created it for everyone to use?" "Lula!" "Who built Highway 101?" "Lula!" "Who is finishing the Trans-Northeast Highway?" "Lula!" "Who built the Petrobras refinery in Suape?" "Lula!" "Who established a pharmaceutical industry in the town of Goiana [Pernambuco]?" "Lula!" "Who built seven new federal universities? Who created more jobs? Who created the Minha Casa Minha Vida social housing program?" "Lula!" "And what did they ever create?" "Nothing!"