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Reporters Without Borders today condemned measures taken by courts in Brazilian capital Brasília and the southeastern state of Minas Gerais aimed at gagging the press just a few weeks before the October 1st general elections.
"It does not take a degree in rocket science to know what Brasília's regional electoral court seems to have realized, that press revelations about candidates can have a major impact on elections," the press freedom organization said. "But this is not a matter for the courts, unless they accept that they take orders from politicians. It is up to the public to form their opinions on the basis of the information they have a right to receive." Judge Roberval Casemiro Belinati of the Brasília federal district electoral tribunal issued an order on August 27 banning all news media in his region from reporting the content or even referring to the existence of a conversation between two politicians that was recorded, transcribed and posted on a website. The judge did this at the request of one of the two politicians involved, former Brasília federal district governor Joaquim Roriz. In the recorded conversation between him and his lawyer, Eri Varela, a federal parliamentary candidate, Roriz was extremely critical of parliamentary representative José Roberto Arruda, the front-runner in the current race for the Brasília governorship. On the morning of August 27, journalist Ricardo Noblat posted the transcript of the conversation on his blog on the website of the O Estado de São Paulo ("O Estadão") newspaper. A judicial official went to O Estadão's office in Brasília with a publication ban on the evening of the same day, but by then Arruda had already announced his intention to sue Roriz. Judge Belinati's position was that the publication of the conversation could affect the electoral prospects of the politicians involved. On August 30, federal police burst into the offices of the weekly Jornal Hoje in Belo Horizonte (the capital of Minas Gerais state) and seized computers and other office equipment. Jornal Hoje editor Joseti Alves said his newspaper had been charged with "an electoral crime" for revealing alleged irregularities by federal parliamentary representative Carlos Melles, who used to be tourism minister. Undistributed copies of the 9 February issue of the magazine Revista do Observatório Social were seized in Ouro Preto (also in Minas Gerais state) during the second half of August. The issue contained a report entitled "The Stone Age" about children who work in a Minas Gerais talc mine. The copies were seized as a result of June 30 court ruling that the magazine broke a law banning the publication of photos of minors without permission. The same law also bans child labor.
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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.
Yeahhhhh ! Brazil just demonstrate to the world how much they are in favor of reducing corruptions practices.
Lamentable !
Simply because when elected, your politicians are no longer under the laws of your Justice but the verdict is made in secret votes by the other politicians and 90 % of the time the corrupted politicians are absolved......meaning they can continue to keep the same political power and continue their corruptions practices.
A tragedy for a democracy......but the DAILY way of life in Brazil.