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MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, October 28th 2026 - 05:55 UTC

Brazil

  • Monday, October 19th 2026 - 06:15 UTC

    Lula asks Bolsonaro whether he will wield “Milei’s chainsaw” in a heated debate

    The face-off, lasting more than two hours, was held at the headquarters of the Band network in São Paulo and was the first of the campaign: neither candidate had attended the first-round debates

    Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked his rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, on Sunday whether he intends to apply Argentine President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” to cut 250 billion reais in public spending, during a first televised debate marked by mutual accusations of corruption, a week before the October 25 runoff.

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  • Sunday, October 18th 2026 - 19:43 UTC

    Lula’s campaign takes alleged Meta favouritism towards Bolsonaro to the UN and federal police

    The incidents reported include reduced reach for Lula’s Instagram profiles, WhatsApp searches for the “Lula’s Army” channel suggesting the “Flávio’s Troop” channel instead

    The coalition backing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s re-election on Saturday reported to the UN alleged unequal treatment by Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, in favour of his rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, and asked the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Federal Police to investigate possible illegal funding of his campaign. Meta attributes the incidents to technical errors.

  • Saturday, October 17th 2026 - 06:23 UTC

    Bolsonaro and Lula head into the final stretch of Brazil’s campaign in a statistical tie

    Both polls were conducted before the Senate approved on Wednesday a cut in the working week from 44 to 40 hours, one of the flagships of Lula’s campaign

    Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are heading into the final days of the campaign for the October 25 runoff in a statistical tie, according to two new polls. A Datafolha survey released on Thursday night gives Bolsonaro 51% of valid votes and Lula 49%, compared with 52% and 48% a week earlier, with a margin of error of two points.

  • Friday, October 16th 2026 - 09:40 UTC

    Argentina abstains on a Russian UN resolution on colonialism and draws criticism

    Several speakers questioned Russia’s credibility in presenting it given its invasion of Ukraine. Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico were among the countries that voted in favour

    Argentina abstained on Thursday in a vote by the UN General Assembly’s Fourth Committee on a Russian-sponsored draft on “contemporary forms of colonialism”, a decision that Buenos Aires province’s government minister, opposition figure Carlos Bianco, linked to President Javier Milei’s alignment with the United States and to Argentina’s strategy over the Falklands.

  • Thursday, October 15th 2026 - 20:54 UTC

    Brazil approves a 40-hour week and two days off ten days before the runoff

    Lula’s campaign hopes the reform will help him overturn the nearly two-point deficit with which he ended the first round

    Brazil’s Senate on Wednesday approved, by 75 votes to one, a cut in the maximum working week from 44 to 40 hours with no reduction in pay, ending the so-called 6x1 schedule of six working days and one day off and extending to two the days off for formal-sector workers. The reform, which according to Reuters benefits some 37 million people, comes ten days before the presidential runoff between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro.

  • Tuesday, October 13th 2026 - 14:52 UTC

    Lubetkin warns Flávio Bolsonaro that “it is not easy to leave Mercosur”

    “It is not easy to leave Mercosur. There are too many interrelated agreements in the business sphere, and that would cause major losses for the Brazilian economy,” Lubetkin said

    Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin has warned Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro that “it is not easy to leave Mercosur”, in response to his criticism of the bloc during the campaign for the October 25 runoff. In the same interview, with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, he said Uruguay would not restore diplomatic relations with Venezuela while Delcy Rodríguez governs.

  • Tuesday, October 13th 2026 - 06:29 UTC

    Brazil blames human action for the fires sweeping the Amazon

    The fires coincide with an El Niño episode that forecasts place among the most intense in recent decades and that is usually associated with drought in the Amazon

    The Brazilian government has blamed deliberate human action for the wave of fires in Amazonas state, where 540 new hotspots were recorded in 48 hours, more than half of those detected in the whole of October 2025, according to the National Institute for Space Research. The situation has led to a state of emergency in 36 municipalities.

  • Monday, October 12th 2026 - 22:09 UTC

    Iguazú Falls closed as the river’s flow tops 12,000 cubic metres per second

    The river rose just over two metres between Sunday and Monday at Puerto Iguazú and reached a level of 24.30 metres, and was still rising

    Iguazú National Park, in Argentina’s Misiones province, closed access to the falls’ walkways on Monday because of an exceptional rise in the Iguazú River, whose flow exceeded 12,000 cubic metres per second. The flood is part of an episode of heavy rainfall linked to El Niño that has also caused the Uruguay River to burst its banks, with evacuations on both sides.

  • Monday, October 12th 2026 - 10:50 UTC

    Lula takes to the streets of São Paulo to close the gap two weeks before the runoff

    With so few undecided voters, the Workers’ Party strategy is focused on the roughly 33 million Brazilians who did not vote in the first round

    Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva led a large rally on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista on Sunday to relaunch his campaign two weeks before the October 25 runoff, in which he trails Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. “This country cannot lose its democracy,” he told a largely young crowd.

  • Thursday, October 8th 2026 - 08:10 UTC

    Flávio Bolsonaro proposes constitutional reform to overhaul the courts and lower the criminal age

    The candidate said he intended to use his party's legislative weight to choose the presiding officers of both chambers and “amend the Constitution, to redemocratise the country”

    Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who will face Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil's presidential runoff on October 25, has said that if he wins he will use his Liberal Party's congressional bloc to push a constitutional reform that would change the judiciary, lower the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 and abolish presidential re-election.