Emergency workers confirmed 10 victims at the site, which was operating without proper authorization, said the fire department for Rio Grande do Sul state, whose capital is Porto Alegre.

Mayor Sebastiao Melo wrote on X that multiple injured victims were rescued and taken to the hospital, but did not say how many. Local media reports put the number of injured at 11, some in serious condition.

“It happened very fast. People yelled ‘fire!’ When I saw it, it was already two doors from mine. I ran out as fast as I could, because there was already a lot of smoke,” an unidentified resident of the building told news site G1.

The fire broke out around 2:00 am (0500 GMT), officials said. It took firefighters around three hours to bring it under control.

“Forensic experts are at the scene to identify the victims and investigate the cause of the fire,” the fire department said in a statement.

An AFP photographer at the scene early Friday saw firefighters still at work around the badly charred three-storey building.

Images in Brazilian media from overnight showed the building engulfed in flames as firefighters battled to extinguish them.

– ‘Tragedy foretold’ –

State Governor Eduardo Leite vowed an investigation into the incident.

“The fire department dispatched five trucks and dozens of firefighters to fight the flames,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“We will continue working on the aftermath of this tragedy and the investigation of the causes. My condolences to the victims’ families.”

State lawmaker Matheus Gomes accused the city government of funding the homeless shelter even though it had faced reports of non-compliance with regulations “for years.”

“There needs to be an investigation not only into the fire, but the entire chronicle of this tragedy foretold,” he wrote on X.

The deadly fire comes 11 years after another in Rio Grande do Sul state. In 2013, 242 people were killed at the Kiss nightclub in the town of Santa Maria when sparks from a flare lit by a band during a concert ignited the ceiling.

The post At least 10 people killed in Brazil fire: officials appeared first on Digital Journal.

Bolsonaro came under scrutiny when it emerged he had stayed at the embassy in February, days after police confiscated his passport as part of their investigation into allegations the far-right ex-president took part in a coup attempt aimed at keeping him in power despite his 2022 election loss.

“There is no concrete evidence effectively indicating that the accused intended to seek diplomatic asylum to flee the country and escape criminal investigation,” Judge Alexandre de Moraes wrote in his ruling, dated Wednesday.

The former president and members of his inner circle face accusations of plotting to discredit Brazil’s election system and cling to power in the months around the October 2022 vote, which culminated with Bolsonaro supporters storming the halls of power a week after leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s swearing-in.

Police say Bolsonaro edited a draft decree that would have declared a state of emergency, called new elections and ordered the arrest of Moraes, who is the lead judge on multiple investigations targeting the ex-president.

On February 8, police carried out raids targeting Bolsonaro and his inner circle, arresting three people and confiscating the former president’s passport.

In March, The New York Times revealed that Bolsonaro had stayed at the Hungarian embassy from February 12 to 14, leading to a separate investigation on accusations of attempting to flee the justice system.

Bolsonaro denies all the accusations and says he is the victim of political persecution.

His lawyers said the embassy stay was about maintaining friendly ties with Hungary and his “good relationship” with far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The post Brazil judge drops case on Bolsonaro stay in Hungarian embassy appeared first on Digital Journal.

Direct strikes on the vast South American country’s extensive road network are the top threat to numerous species, forced to live in ever-closer proximity with humans.

According to the Brazilian Center for Road Ecology (CBEE), some 475 million vertebrate animals die on the road every year — mostly smaller species such as capybaras, armadillos and possums.

“It is the biggest direct impact on wildlife today in Brazil,” CBEE coordinator Alex Bager told AFP.

Shocked by the carnage in the world’s most biodiverse country, computer science student Gabriel Souto Ferrante sprung into action.

The 25-year-old started by identifying the five medium- and large-sized species most likely to fall victim to traffic accidents: the puma, the giant anteater, the tapir, the maned wolf and the jaguarundi, a type of wild cat.

Souto, who is pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), then created a database with thousands of images of these animals, and trained an AI model to recognize them in real time.

Numerous tests followed, and were successful, according to the results of his efforts recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Souto collaborated with the USP Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences.

For the project to become a reality, Souto said scientists would need “support from the companies that manage the roads,” including access to traffic cameras and “edge computing” devices — hardware that can relay a real-time warning to drivers like some navigation apps do.

There would also need to be input from the road concession companies, “to remove the animal or capture it,” he told AFP.

It is hoped the technology, by reducing wildlife strikes, will also save human lives.

– ‘More roads, more vehicles’- 

Bager said a variety of other strategies to stop the bloodshed on Brazilian roads have failed.

Signage warning drivers to be on the lookout for crossing animals have little influence, he told AFP, leading to a mere three-percent reduction in speed on average.

There are also so-called fauna bridges and tunnels meant to get animals safely from one side of the road to the other, and fences to keep them in — all insufficient to deal with the scope of the problem, according to Bager.

In 2014, he created an app called Urubu with other ecologists, to which thousands of users contributed information, allowing for the identification of roadkill hotspots.

The project helped to create public awareness and even inspired a bill on safe animal crossing and circulation, which is awaiting a vote in Congress. 

A lack of money saw the app being shut down last year, but Bager is intent on having it reactivated.

“We have more and more roads, more vehicles and a number of roadkill animals that likely continues to grow,” he said.

The post In Brazil, hopes to use AI to save wildlife from roadkill fate appeared first on Digital Journal.

Now, a new crop of Latin American startups is helping do that with artificial intelligence, promising a farming revolution in agricultural giants like Brazil, the world’s biggest exporter of soybeans, corn and beef.

Aline Oliveira Pezente, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, was working at agriculture company Louis Dreyfus Commodities when she noticed a problem in how the farming industry operates in Brazil. 

Producers need huge amounts of credit up-front to buy inputs like seed and fertilizer, she says. But lenders are wary given how difficult it is to size up the myriad risks, from the natural — droughts, floods, crop disease, erosion — to the financial — bankruptcy, price crashes and more.

In 2018, Aline and her husband Fabricio launched a startup called Traive that collects massive amounts of agriculture-related data, then analyzes it with AI, breaking down the capital risk for lenders and giving farmers easier access to credit.

“Lenders used to each use their own (risk analysis) model. Imagine like a giant Excel file,” Aline told AFP. “But it’s very hard for humans, even those who are super knowledgeable of statistics and mathematics, to create equations that capture the nuances of all the variables.

“They were taking three months to do something that we can do in five minutes with way better accuracy,” said Aline, who has a master’s degree specializing in AI and data analysis from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

– AI for agriculture –

Seven years on, Traive’s clients include agro-industry giants like Syngenta, fintech firms and Latin America’s second-biggest bank, Banco do Brasil. More than 70,000 producers use its platform, which has facilitated nearly $1 billion in financial operations, it says.

Aline presented her work this week at the Rio de Janeiro edition of Web Summit, the massive tech gathering dubbed “Davos for Geeks.”

Speaking alongside her on a panel called “Harvesting Data: The Next Agricultural Revolution,” fellow entrepreneur Alejandro Mieses explained how AI has the potential to reshape farming.

Worldwide, farmers are increasingly turning to AI to boost yields and returns, with applications like self-driving tractors, drones that track crop health and smart cameras that recognize weeds for herbicide treatment.

Mieses’s Puerto Rico-based startup, TerraFirma, developed an AI model that uses satellite images to forecast environmental risks like natural disasters, crop disease and erosion.

“We insist on the physics of it, because we believe that is the base point. Understanding how water moves, how wind moves, how different solar exposures operate throughout your farmland,” he said at Web Summit, of which AFP is a media partner this year.

The hard part, the panelists said: AI models have to be trained on massive amounts of data.

Although farmers tend to be data-obsessed — painstakingly tracking environmental conditions, inputs and productivity — gathering and processing that information around the world is complex.

“It’s quite resource-intensive. You need servers, you need an immense repository of data,” said Mieses, 39.

“It’s the same old story of garbage in, garbage out.”

– Climate question –

The agriculture industry faces criticism in countries like Brazil, whose rise as an agricultural powerhouse has also seen a surge of environmental destruction in key regions like the Amazon rainforest, a vital resource against climate change.

Innovation optimists argue that, with the world’s population expected to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050, technologies like AI are humanity’s best hope for surviving without destroying the planet.

Mariana Vasconcelos is the 32-year-old chief executive of Brazilian startup Agrosmart, which uses AI to help farmers manage climate risks and produce more sustainably.

“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says we need to increase food production to feed a growing population. At the same time, we have to produce with less: less land, less deforestation, less carbon footprint. How can we do that without technology?” she said.

“Agriculture is often seen as opposed to nature. But I think technology is showing that actually it can regenerate, restore the environment, work together with nature… Agriculture is headed for a more sustainable model.”

The post ‘Harvesting data’: Latin American AI startups transform farming appeared first on Digital Journal.

Now he has a new target in his disinformation crackdown: Elon Musk.

The billionaire X owner, who calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” recently went on the attack against Moraes, labeling him a dictator and threatening to defy the judge’s rulings blocking users found to be spreading disinformation — largely Bolsonaro supporters.

Moraes responded by ordering fines of $20,000 a day for any account that X reactivates, put Musk under investigation for charges including obstruction of justice and accused him of a “criminal instrumentalization” of the social network formerly called Twitter.

Known by his nickname, “Xandao,” Moraes, 55, looms large over the fissures of a deeply divided Brazil.

The immensely powerful judge, who also heads the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), is hated by the far right, which accuses him of censorship and abuse of office.

To others, he is a hero using the bench to save Brazil’s young democracy.

– ‘Political animal’ –

There was little in Moraes’s background to hint he would become a conservative nemesis.

The constitutional law expert worked as a Sao Paulo state prosecutor, then went on to become state security secretary. Known as a hardliner, he drew criticism from left-wing activists, who accused him of repressing social movements.

He served as justice minister under center-right ex-president Michel Temer, who named him to the Supreme Court in 2017.

“Legal expertise has played a part in his meteoric rise, but what put him on the Supreme Court, and 99 percent of his career, is politics. He’s a political animal,” constitutional law expert Antonio Carlos de Freitas told AFP.

Despite his severe demeanor, Moraes is known for a sense of humor behind the scenes.

Supreme Court insiders call him a pragmatist with a gift for engaging in dialogue with various players, including the military.

But he soon found himself on a collision course with Bolsonaro.

During Bolsonaro’s administration (2019-2022), Moraes ordered investigations of several of the president’s allies. Bolsonaro called him “scum” and vowed to stop following his rulings.

Moraes has presided over a slew of cases targeting the politician dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” who has been barred from running for office until 2030 over his attempts to discredit the electoral system — a decision delivered by the TSE, the electoral court Moraes heads.

Moraes’s current docket includes what may be the most damaging case against Bolsonaro: the investigation into charges the ex-president and his inner circle plotted a coup to stay in power despite losing the 2022 elections to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“Bolsonaro’s camp has found a favorite enemy in Moraes, who has dealt them their biggest defeats at the Supreme Court and blocked the spread of fake news,” Freitas said.

Police investigating Bolsonaro’s alleged coup plot say it included a presidential decree that would have declared a state of emergency, called new elections and ordered Moraes’s arrest.

– Disinformation war –

Moraes was an omnipresent figure during the polarizing 2022 campaign, aggressively using his rulings to fight election disinformation on social media.

That included blocking some prominent right-wing figures’ accounts — the decisions Tesla and SpaceX boss Musk is now threatening to disobey.

Moraes gives few interviews, and rarely posts on his own X account, “@Alexandre,” where he nevertheless has a million followers.

“Freedom of expression doesn’t mean freedom of aggression,” he has said.

“It doesn’t mean the freedom to defend tyranny.”

Still two decades away from the mandatory retirement age for judges in Brazil — 75 — Moraes has political ambitions, including being president some day, a source close to him told AFP.

Meanwhile, Musk will want to watch out if he challenges Moraes to a cage fight, as he did with fellow tech titan Mark Zuckerberg — and as some internet wags have been hoping: Moraes has studied “muay thai,” the martial art known as Thai boxing.

The post Alexandre de Moraes: Brazil judge in feud with Elon Musk appeared first on Digital Journal.

Here are five things to know about the billionaire’s beef with powerful, polarizing Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

– Musk attacks –

Musk went on the attack at the weekend against Moraes, who has waged a crusade against disinformation — especially attempts by far-right supporters of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro to discredit the electoral system ahead of Brazil’s 2022 elections.

Moraes has “betrayed the constitution” and “should resign or be impeached,” the Tesla and SpaceX boss wrote on X, the former Twitter, threatening to defy court orders blocking users.

The flare-up came after US journalist and activist Michael Shellenberger last week accused Moraes of a “sweeping crackdown on free speech,” in a report based on the “Twitter Files,” a cache of internal documents Musk released in 2022 after buying the company.

Shellenberger said the files showed Moraes “sought to censor… sitting members of Brazil’s Congress” and “weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president @jairbolsonaro.”

Bolsonaro narrowly lost the 2022 elections to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

– Supreme Court response –

Moraes, who is also head of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal, responded Sunday by ordering fines of 100,000 reais (around $20,000) a day for any blocked account that X reactivates — which has not happened yet.

Users blocked by Moraes include figures like far-right ex-congressman Daniel Silveira, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2022 on charges of leading a movement to overthrow the Supreme Court.

Accusing Musk of “criminal instrumentalization” of X, Moraes placed the South Africa-born mogul under investigation for crimes including conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Moraes also added Musk to an ongoing “Digital Militias” probe, which is investigating accusations that Bolsonaro and his inner circle illegally used state resources to orchestrate online disinformation campaigns during his presidency (2019-2022).

– Musk and Bolsonaro –

Musk has something of a bromance with Bolsonaro, the politician dubbed the “Tropical Trump.”

Bolsonaro, who has himself had numerous posts removed from social media for spreading disinformation, celebrated Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022 and gave him a medal for his “service to Brazil” when the billionaire made a high-profile visit that year.

Bolsonaro reposted a video of that meeting Saturday on X.

Musk “is our salvation,” he said in another video Sunday. “Our democracy is under threat.”

Amid the row, Brazil’s far right has rallied around Musk and doubled down on its hatred for Moraes. Hardline conservative lawmakers launched a manifesto backing the call for Moraes’s impeachment.

– Cage fight? –

Musk put the spat in dramatic terms.

“We will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there,” he wrote Saturday. “But principles matter more than profit.”

Besides pledging to reinstate blocked accounts, he vowed a “full data dump” of Moraes’s court orders.

He has not followed through on either yet.

Online, some rooted for the row to go to the ring, like Musk’s aborted plan for a cage fight with Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg last year.

“Musk wanted to get in the octagon with Zuckerberg. Now he’s going with Xandao (Moraes’s nickname) instead. I’d pay to see that fight,” one X user wrote.

Moraes looks unlikely to face impeachment — or slow his disinformation crackdown.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso issued a statement Monday supporting Moraes’s rulings.

– ‘Censorship’ vs. regulation –

Senate president Rodrigo Pacheco, whose chamber would preside over any impeachment case, meanwhile rejected the “censorship” label. He called on lower-house lawmakers to pass a bill regulating social networks, as the Senate did in 2020.

Brazil is part of a growing international debate about the limits of free speech on social media, where some say allowing a free-for-all endangers democracy.

“Freedom of speech is one thing. Coordinated, financed attacks on democracy itself are another,” Brazilian digital rights expert Estela Aranha told AFP.

She said it is “urgent and important” to regulate social media, but she is not holding out hope for that to happen soon in deeply polarized Brazil.

The post Musk vs. Brazil Supreme Court: five things to know appeared first on Digital Journal.

In an order seen by AFP, Judge Alexandre de Moraes accused the owner of X of “criminal instrumentalization” of the platform.

The judge said “the social network X must refrain from disobeying judicial orders, including by reactivating an account that the Supreme Court ordered blocked.” Moraes threatened to punish the world’s richest person with a fine equivalent to about $20,000 for each reactivated account.

In recent years Moraes has ordered the suspension of Twitter accounts suspected of spreading disinformation.

“Social networks are not lands without laws,” the judge wrote in capital letters in his order.

Beginning Saturday evening, Musk took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter which he purchased in 2022, to launch a series of attacks against Moraes.

“This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil. He should resign or be impeached,” the Tesla and SpaceX boss posted.

As a result of Moraes threatening to impose massive fines and “cut off access” to the platform, “we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there,” Musk posted.

“But principles matter more than profit,” he said.

A divisive judicial figure — tyrannical to some and a fervent defender of democracy to others — Moraes is one of the 11 members on Brazil’s high court. He also presides over the country’s Superior Electoral Tribunal, or TSE.

Critics, now including Musk, have said Moraes is part of a sweeping crackdown against free speech in Brazil.

Moraes has spearheaded the battle against disinformation in South America’s largest nation. In recent years he has ordered the blocking of accounts of influential figures on social networks, most of them supporters of Jair Bolsonaro.

The far-right former president in 2023 was declared ineligible to run for office by the Moraes-led TSE, for disseminating false information about Brazil’s electoral system.

Bolsonaro is also being investigated over an attempted coup to prevent his 2022 electoral defeat against the current leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, after a crowd of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the headquarters of the country’s three branches of power in Brasilia.

Shortly after Musk’s first attacks on Moraes, Brazil’s Attorney General Jorge Messias called for “urgent regulation of social networks.”

“We cannot live in a society where billionaires who live abroad control social networks and show themselves willing to violate the rule of law, disobeying judicial orders and threatening our authorities,” he said on X, without mentioning Musk by name.

The post Brazil judge orders probe of Musk over censorship charge appeared first on Digital Journal.

“We need to bring Brazilian society and the armed forces closer, not treat each other as if we were enemies,” the leftist president told reporters in late February.

On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military ousted then-president Joao Goulart and went on to hold dictatorial power for 21 years.

The era, long a flashpoint in Brazilian politics, still counts among its defenders the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who served as president from 2019 to 2022.

The anniversary had seemed a natural one for Lula — a former union official who once led an historic workers’ strike against the military regime — to remember the 434 people who were killed or disappeared during military rule, according to the findings of a 2014 National Truth Commission.

In contrast to neighboring Argentina, which tried state agents for crimes committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship there, in Brazil that dark chapter ended with the 1979 passage of an amnesty law.

– ‘Political calculation’ –

But the 78-year-old Lula told reporters the 1964 coup was “already part of history,” adding that his government “will not dwell on the matter.”

“I am more concerned with the coup of January 8, 2023 than the one in 1964,” he added. 

That day in January, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters invaded the seat of power in Brasilia — the Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices — calling on the military to depose Lula a week after his inauguration.

Police are investigating Bolsonaro for allegedly taking part in plotting a “coup d’etat” to remain in power after his election defeat in 2022.

Several of his close allies have been linked to the plot, including government ministers and high-ranking army officers. Police have detained a major and a colonel. 

“There has never been a time as propitious to discuss the place of the armed forces in Brazilian society as there was after the Bolsonaro government and January 8,” historian Lucas Pedretti told AFP.

But Lula “made a political calculation placing a strategic accommodation with the armed forces in the foreground, to the detriment… of the historic needs of Brazilian society to review its past,” said Pedretti, a political scientist with the Rio de Janeiro State University. 

– Protests –

Lula’s decision meant the cancellation of events planned by his own government, including the Human Rights Ministry.

Silvio Almeida, who heads that ministry, had planned to deliver a speech at a Brasilia museum honoring those who were killed or persecuted by the former military regime, local media reported.

While Lula last year had reversed a Bolsonaro policy that allowed the military to hold celebrations of the 1964 coup, there will be no official reflections this year on the role of the armed forces then or since.

“It’s history; we don’t need to be stirring things up,” one army source told AFP.

Rights groups have insisted that Lula reinstate the Special Commission on Deaths and Political Disappearances, which was established in 1995 to investigate political crimes during the dictatorship years, then canceled by Bolsonaro in his final year in government.

The Brazilian Coalition for Memory, Truth and Justice — which groups more than 150 associations — sharply criticized the president’s decision not to commemorate the coup anniversary.

“Vigorously repudiating the 1964 coup is a way of reaffirming the commitment to punish current and possible future coup attempts,” the group said in a statement.

“We will not accept that governments again negotiate or abandon the rights of victims in order to be able to compromise with the military,” the statement added.

The post Under shadow of 2023 riot, Lula plays down Brazil’s ’64 coup appeared first on Digital Journal.

She started in the entertainment industry at a young age in Brazil, but grew up in Tampa, Florida.

‘Rio Connection’

On being a part of “Rio Connection,” she said, “It was fantastic. It was my first big role. It was one of the best experiences that I’ve had so far in my career.”

The show is a smash hit in Brazil right now.

‘Passport to Freedom’

In “Passport to Freedom,” she played Tina Fallada, which marked the first time she played a Brazilian character. “Ironically enough, that opened the door to ‘Rio Connection.’ It was my first time acting in my home country since it was filmed in Brazil (even though we shot it in English),” she said.

“This was the first time that I acted in Brazil since I was 11, and I worked with a director that I worked with when I was a child (we did commercials when I was eight or nine years old). It was pretty wild,” she said with a sweet laugh.

‘She’s Obsessed with my Husband’ on Lifetime

The new Lifetime movie “She’s Obsessed with My Husband” was directed by by Doug Campbell.

The synopsis is: A woman moves in next door to her high school crush, now married, and schemes to end his marriage so she can become his wife instead. “That was my most recent Lifetime movie that came out in February, and it was my second film with Doug Campbell. I get to go brunette in it, which is fun.”

“I tend to play strong woman but this character was a bit of a victim so I got to explore that side of things. It was a fun thriller,” she noted. “In this film, don’t trust crazy neighbors,” she said with a sweet laugh.

Campos had great words about working with actor Matthew Pohlkamp as the male lead Garrett in it. “This is my second time working with Matt on a Lifetime film, he is fantastic,” she exclaimed.

“I think a big part of this movie’s lesson is seeing the growth internally of Daisy, and you have to trust your partner and family regardless of outside forces. Honestly, you should trust in yourself.”

“My character is insecure about herself because of the way she looks and she doesn’t see her own qualities outside of her looks. It’s not about the outside, it’s about the inside, and I think Garrett sees that in Daisy. Basically, don’t judge a book by its cover,” she acknowledged.

The digital age

On being an actress in the digital age, she explained, “The digital age is both a good thing and a bad thing.”

“Social media is great because you can connect with an audience and you can build a fan-base. You can get more personal with them and you can get to share things with them, and you can show them who you are off-screen so that is fantastic,” she explained.

“Social media gives you a platform to keep in touch with them and continue to grow that fan-base,” she noted.

“The downside of social media is that you do one thing wrong, and then the whole world knows it,” she said. “The good thing is that social media allows me to connect with people from all over the world from an international standpoint.”

Stage of her life

On the title of the current chapter of her life, Campos said, “The Harvesting Phase.” “I feel like I’ve spent a lot of years planting seeds and now these seeds are starting to finally grow,” she said.

“I am finally starting to see the fruits of the labor,” she added.

Advice for young and aspiring actors

For young and aspiring actors, she said with a sweet laugh, “Don’t do it.”

“First and foremost, you have to really love this industry in order to succeed because it’s not easy. You have to do so much more than the reward it gives you, and you have to be okay with the amount of rejections,” she said.

“You have to be really proactive in your career. You can’t just sit back and wait for auditions to come in. You have to really love the craft and the business because it’s showbusiness. Otherwise, it is very difficult to succeed in this industry,” she added.

Success

On her definition of the word success, Campos said, “Success means accomplishing something that you’ve put your mind to regardless of what the world around tells you. If that is what your heart desires, then you are successful.”

To learn more about Arye Campos, follow her on Instagram and check out her IMDb page.

The post Arye Campos talks about her acting career and the digital age appeared first on Digital Journal.

Macron wrapped up his three-day tour of the Latin American giant with a solemn, but warm, trip to the presidential palace in the modernist capital Brasilia.

The French leader paid tribute to “the spirit of resistance” of Lula’s government for “restoring democracy” after a crowd of extreme-right supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the seats of power in the city in January 2023.

Lula hailed a relationship between the two countries as one that created “a bridge between the global South and the developed world.”

While the two men firmly reset the frosty ties of the Bolsonaro years, they retain deep differences over the war in Ukraine, a subject which only briefly reared its head.

While France and the West support Kyiv wholeheartedly, Lula has in the past said that Ukraine and Russia share responsibility over the conflict and has refused to isolate Moscow.

– Putin at G20 meet? –

Responding to a question from a journalist, Macron said that Brazil, as the current chair of the G20, could invite Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to a summit in Rio de Janeiro in November if other members agreed.

“The meaning of this club is that there must be consensus with the 19 others. That will be a job for Brazilian diplomacy,” he said.

If such a meeting can be “useful, it must be done,” Macron said. 

Lula responded only that “diversity” must be accepted in organizations like the G20.

Putin missed last year’s G20 summit in the Indian capital New Delhi, avoiding possible political opprobrium and any risk of criminal detention under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.

In September 2023, Lula said there was “no way” that Putin would be arrested if he attended the Rio de Janeiro summit. 

Shortly after, he backtracked and said that it would be up to the justice system to decide on Putin’s eventual arrest and not his government. 

Lula’s only remarks on the conflict were that “the two stubborn” leaders will “have to get along,” referring to Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

– Unity on Venezuela –

However, he highlighted that Ukraine was not Brazil’s priority, and turned to a crisis in his own neighborhood, that he and Macron agreed upon: Venezuela.

Both leaders condemned the exclusion of the main opposition coalition’s chosen candidate, Corina Yoris, 80, from July 28 elections.

“We very firmly condemn the exclusion of a serious and credible candidate from this process,” Macron said.

Lula described the situation as “serious” and said there was “no legal or political explanation for banning an opponent from being a candidate.”

“I told Maduro that the most important thing to restore normality in Venezuela was to avoid any problems in the electoral process, that the elections be held in the most democratic way possible.”

From the protection of the Amazon to cooperation in the building of submarines and economic ties, the two leaders showed off the broad Franco-Brazilian partnership over the three-day visit.

Macron and Lula also brushed over tensions about the long-delayed EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, which Brazil has pushed for and France has blocked.

Macron blasted the deal as “a really bad agreement” and said it should be buried in favor of a new one that “is responsible from a development, climate and biodiversity point of view.”

Lula said he was “very calm” and noted only that Brazil “does not negotiate with France” but with the EU. 

The two leaders’ close relationship was highlighted by a warm meeting in the Amazon, in which they were pictured beaming and clasping hands, to the delight of Brazilians who spawned a raft of memes comparing the images to a wedding album.

The post Lula, Macron find common ground, despite Ukraine shadow appeared first on Digital Journal.