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 Osvaldo Freixinho, a judge from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ordered the Brazilian version of Playboy magazine to recall its August issue which contained a photograph of actress Carol Castro, semi-nude and posing with a rosary. The recall was requested by the Rio-based Pela Vida Catholic youth institute and a priest from Goiás identified as Lodi.
Ricardo Brajterman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that the photograph "hurt the feelings of believers". According to Brajterman, the decision also ordered the magazine to refrain from using religious elements in future articles that include nudes. In February, Brajterman also obtained a court order prohibiting a parade float with allegorical references to the Holocaust from entering Rio's Carnaval.
The magazine continues being sold freely in Brazilian news stands three days after the court decision. The erotic essay is one of the most daring by the Brazilian version of the publication ever, including rare shots of frontal nudity.
Playboy Brazil says it has not yet been notified of Freixinho's ruling. If the magazine fails to follow the judge's order after being notified, it could be ordered to pay as much as 1,000 reais (US$ 617) per day in
fines.
Castro is a novela (soap opera) star of Globo network, Brazil's audience leader TV. Edson Aran, editor of Playboy Brazil called the polemic "a tempest on a teacup."
Talking to Dia FM, a Rio radio station, the actress called herself a good catholic and denied that she had any intention to shock, stir a scandal or challenge de Catholic church. She called the pictures artistic and in good taste. As for the rosary, she explained, it was just an allusion to a character in Dona Flor and Her Two Husband by Jorge Amado whom she is playing on the stage right now.
A spokesperson for the São Paulo archdiocese, Juarez de Castro, however, disagreed. For him, the picture is a flagrant disrespect "not only to the Catholic church, but also to the people's faith. It's fashionable to say that these pictures are a photo essay, but in truth they are not more than vulgar eroticism."
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Indeed I strongly suspect, you may have made the correct assumption... LOL 
Would he do what no right-minded human parent would do? Certainly not! 
), in spite of his being a God fearing Christian. 
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. 