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The Brazilian government announced it has returned 1,500 tons of hazardous waste that arrived from Britain labeled as recyclable plastic. The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources said 89 containers left for Felixstowe, UK, from the port of Santos, in southeastern Brazil, on board MSC Oriane.
The containers, which arrived between February and May at Brazilian ports in Santos and Rio Grande do Sul were labeled recyclable plastic, but were found to be packed with domestic and hospital waste including batteries, used syringes, condoms, old medicine and dirty diapers.
Three Brazilian men living in the UK have been arrested in connection with a probe into alleged illegal shipments of waste. They were held after officers from the Environment Agency and Wiltshire Police raided three properties in Swindon last month.
A 49-year-old, a 28-year-old and a 24-year-old man were detained before being bailed until the end of October. Waste can be sent abroad for recycling, but it is illegal to export it for disposal. The maximum penalty for breaking the rules is an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison.
Brazil's government said it would make a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization over the container deliveries. Officials said under the Basel Convention, shipments of toxic waste from industrialized nations were banned.
Brazilian authorities also sanctioned companies involved in importing and transporting the hazardous waste with fines up to US$ 225,000.
Ingrid Maria Furlan Oberg, chief of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources's (Ibama) branch in Santos, informed that 41 containers from the city's port were added to 40 others that came from the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the south of Brazil.
There are an extra eight containers in Caxias do Sul, also in Rio Grande do Sul that will be repatriated later. Oberg's assessment:
"For us at Ibama, this trash going back is the end of a task. The sensation is good, it produced the results we expected. And it is symbolic because it shows that Brazil does not accept this kind of behavior. Let it serve as an example to other countries."
MP/Bzz
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
I hope they are deported for abusing the country that generously offered them hospitality.