Continuing a trend of European businesses moving independently to protect the Amazon, France’s BNP Paribas announced it will no longer finance companies that buy cattle or soy produced on deforested or converted Amazon lands after 2008. The measure also applies to deforested lands in Brazil’s Cerrado region, a threatened tropical savanna eco-region covering 20% of … Read more
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) announced today that the power supply has been cut off throughout Tigray State in Ethiopia. In a statement EEP said the power supply had been cut off throughout Tigray due to attacks by “Junta Suburbs” — a group of people from TPLF responsible for the alleged attack on … Read more
A Bolivian farmer accidentally killed 35 condors with strychnine while trying to protect his livestock from a puma living in the area, according to Bolivian authorities after a slow and much-criticized investigation. The large number of deaths was likely due to the behavior of the species at the time of feeding, with sometimes as many … Read more
SAO PAULO – A humanitarian crisis is escalating in the far west Brazilian state of Acre as about 300 Haitians, Indians, Pakistanis have taken over the Friendship Bridge connecting Assis, Brazil with Peru at the Brazil-Peru-Bolivia border. Peruvian authorities are refusing entry and the immigrants are demanding to be allowed to return home through the … Read more
A global increase of 2.4% in Brazilian instant coffee exports in 2020 occurred alongside a 39% drop in exports to the Arab bloc, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 33% of the decrease, according to numbers made public by ABICS, the Brazilian Instant Coffee Industry Association. Despite the Arab purchase drops, Brazil remains the top producer … Read more
A Chinese man residing in Poland has become the focus of an ad-hoc but potentially precedent-setting trial of whether European countries, bound by human rights commitments both nationally and internationally, will extradite China’s citizens when the Chinese government accuses them of a crime. The man, Li Zhizhou, 53, has been in Europe since 2013. China … Read more
SAO PAULO – Despite a 2018 decision that allows the right to de-indexation of certain information from search engines, a majority of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) has voted that there is no right to prevent media from disclosing truthful old information obtained legally, citing the Freedom of Expression Clause of the Brazilian Constitution and … Read more
Status of 6000+ Ford employees uncertain SAO PAULO – Closing Brazilian operations after “years of significant losses,” Ford’s exit will mean a total direct and indirect loss of 118.864 jobs, along with lost wages totaling some R$2.5 billion per year. The yearly impact on the tax base will be R$3 billion, according to Brazil’s Departamento … Read more
The move, which will first affect Brazil, Canada and Indonesia before being tried out in the US in a few weeks, is part of a company goal to “lower the temperature and discourage divisive conversations” globally, and was announced by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg at a January conference. The change will initially impact only a small … Read more
The Mixed Parliamentary Front in Defence of Public Service is filing an injunction against Constitutional Amendment 32/20, which alters the rules of public sector work. According to Minister of Economic Affairs Paulo Guedes, the reform will save the government R$300 billion in ten years. However, the Mixed Front’s president, MP Israel Batista (Green Party), has … Read more
International Criminal Court judges found that the court has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories because Palestine had been granted membership to the tribunal’s founding treaty. The decision refers to the territories without attempting to say anything about the question of Palestinian statehood or national borders. The ICC’s jurisdiction, the judges found, extends to Gaza and … Read more
At least a significant portion of their supporters, according to U of Aarhus researchers. When two competing political parties in Denmark reversed their policy stance on an issue — suddenly they both supported reducing unemployment benefits — their voters immediately moved their opinions by around 15% into line with their party. The same thing happened … Read more