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 Last Sunday, September 28, 2008, a group of men, some of them armed, bought 30,000 copies of the daily newspaper Extra newspaper - a popular publication belonging to the powerful Globo group - in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro state, in southeastern Brazil in order to stop the newspaper from reaching the public.
The newspaper's front page carried a story entitled, "Campaigning members of Assembly lie in order to safeguard salary of R$ 13,000." Thirteen thousand reais are equivalent to US$ 6,722. The men went to the paper's distribution center in Belford Roxo and bought the Sunday paper copies before they could be distributed.
The article alleged that members of Rio's Assembly, who are candidates in upcoming municipal elections in Brazil, scheduled for October 5, have been absent from their assembly work in Rio de Janeiro and have fabricated other commitments as reasons for their absences in order to avoid having their salaries reduced.
The assemblymen mentioned in the Extra story, Marcelo Simão (from the PHS party), Alessandro Calazans (PMN) and Rodrigo Neves (PT), are running for mayor of São João de Meriti's, Nilópolis (both in the Baixada Fluminense) and Niterói (in the metropolitan area of Rio), respectively.
According to the newspaper, the three candidates lied to Rio's Legislative Assembly in order not to have a discount in their salaries for having been absent from work while they were campaigning.
In a note, all of those denounced by the newspaper condemned the en-masse purchase of the paper and assured that they don't have any connection to the action of the gang that was allegedly led by a fire department colonel. The fire department brass says they have started an investigation to identify the military man.
The president of Brazil's Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) Carlos Ayres Britto, condemned the groups who prevented the sale of the newspaper. He stated that it is the duty of the electoral Justice to react against this kind of action.
"The Public Prosecutor's Office is aware of what's happening and measures will be taken. We will find out exactly what happened, said Brito, adding: "All of these episodes bring an element of disturbance to the electoral process. We cannot cover the sun with a sieve. And we'll always react, because this is our duty."
He didn't say, however, what the TSE might do.
ABRAJI, the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, has published a statement outlining its opinion that the buying of the copies of Extra newspaper constitutes a threat to freedom of
expression and democracy in Brazil. The organization called on the
Brazilian authorities to investigate the incident.
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You have been in rare form these few days.
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.
If only Brazilians politicians would allocate half the energy utilized in corruption scams, into constructive, positive efforts, or projects designed to improve their living standards, working conditions, education advancement and environment protection, the country would have been nearly developed.
I suppose one most go to Congo, Zimbabwe and Nigeria to find higher levels of shameful conduct among the political elite…