Brazil

• Tuesday, January 31st 2017 - 21:56 UTC

  Brazil to lift restrictions on foreign ownership of airlines and farm land

  

  President Michel Temer will propose legislation to lift restrictions on foreign ownership of airlines and agricultural land in Brazil as he strives to pull the economy out of a two-year recession, government sources said on Monday.

• Tuesday, January 31st 2017 - 21:03 UTC

  Brazilian government is “meeting its budget deficit”, says minister Meirelles

  

  Brazil's central government registered a primary budget deficit of 154.255 billion reais (US$49.40 billion) in 2016, meeting its target but recording a third consecutive annual deficit that reflects the dire state of the country's finances. In December, the country posted a primary deficit of 60.124 billion reais (US$19.25 billion).

• Tuesday, January 31st 2017 - 12:07 UTC

  Brazil's ex richest man jailed on return from US; he is linked to the Petrobras scandal

  

  Former Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista on Monday turned himself in to police in Rio de Janeiro on Monday on charges related to the Petrobras corruption scandal. He was detained shortly after arriving from New York.

• Monday, January 30th 2017 - 14:57 UTC

  Oil industry threatens the 1.000 km long coral reef system where the Amazon meets the ocean

  

  The first pictures of a huge coral reef system discovered in the Amazon last year have been released by environmental campaigners. The Amazon Reef is a 9,500 sq km system of corals, sponges and rhodoliths, Greenpeace says. The reef is almost 1,000 km long, and is located where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

• Thursday, January 26th 2017 - 07:38 UTC

  Plane that crashed killing Brazil's top Justice did not suffer “obvious mechanical failure”

  

  The small plane carrying a Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing a political bribery investigation did not suffer any obvious mechanical failure when it crashed into a bay amid heavy rain and killed all five on board, investigators said this week.

• Monday, January 23rd 2017 - 19:01 UTC

  Temer has the delicate task of naming a successor of Justice Zavascki

  

  Brazil's president Michel Temer said that he would wait to name a replacement for the Supreme Court justice who died in a plane crash until after the court reassigns a major corruption case he was handling.

• Friday, January 20th 2017 - 12:42 UTC

  Brazil in shock: Justice investigating country's major corruption dies in air crash

  

  Brazil's President Michel Temer on Thursday evening made an official statement to mourn the death of Supreme Court judge Teori Zavascki, who was killed earlier in the day in a plane crash. Temer declared three days of national mourning in Brazil for the death of the Justice, who was in charge of the court's investigation into a wide-ranging corruption scandal.

• Thursday, January 19th 2017 - 08:00 UTC

  Brazil confident in “recovery curve” coming from a very low level, says Meirelles

  

  Brazil's Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles has admitted that the government is going to revise its official forecast for this year's GDP growth, but gave no details as to the extent of the change. In its latest forecast, the government had estimated the economy was going to grow 1% in 2017.

• Monday, January 16th 2017 - 17:46 UTC

  Airbags maker Takata agrees to pay US$ 1bn in penalties for concealing defects

  

  The Japanese car parts maker Takata has agreed to pay US$1bn in penalties in the US for concealing dangerous defects in its exploding airbags. The firm, which also has assembly plants in Brazil and Uruguay, also pleaded guilty to a single criminal charge, the company and the US Department of Justice said..

• Monday, January 16th 2017 - 17:35 UTC

  Prison massacres (and beheading) continues in Brazil, this time 30 inmates in Natal

  

  The latest in a string of brutal prison massacres involving suspected gang members in Brazil has killed at least 30 inmates, most of whom were beheaded, officials said on Sunday. The bloodbath erupted Saturday night in the overcrowded Alcacuz prison in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. Similar violence at other jails in Brazil left around 100 inmates dead in early January.