Brazil

PORTO ALEGRE (Brazil), Dec 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A Brazilian court convicted four people for their role in a nightclub fire that left 242 people dead nearly a decade ago, handing down sentences of up to 22 years.

  The 2013 fire at the nightclub in the southern town of Santa Maria started when members of a musical band playing that night lit flares that set fire to the ceiling.

  Two owners of the Kiss night club and two members of the Gurizada Fandangueira band were found guilty of murder and attempted murder of the victims, mostly young university students.

BRASILIA, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Brazil's health ministry said its website was hit on Friday by a hacker attack that took several systems down, including one with information about the national immunization program and another used to issue digital vaccination certificates.

The government put off for a week implementing new health requirements for travelers arriving in Brazil due to the attack.

BRASILIA, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has so far been detected in the Americas in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico and the United States, but it is just a matter of time before it circulates in more countries, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned on Wednesday.

The regional health agency said coronavirus infections have turned up in Canada and parts of Mexico, such as Baja California. Except for Panama, Central America is experiencing a steep decline in cases.

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A justice of Brazil’s top court ordered on Friday that President Jair Bolsonaro be investigated for comments linking COVID-19 vaccines to AIDS — an assertion rejected by doctors and scientists.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes instructed the country’s top prosecutor, Augusto Aras, to look into the accusation raised by a pandemic inquiry conducted by Brazil’s Senate.

ALPERCATA, Brazil, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Amid tearful goodbyes, Ana Paula Souza, her husband and their infant son set off for the United States, one of hundreds of families to depart the small Brazilian town of Alpercata in recent months.

Nestled in the hills of southeastern Minas Gerais state, Alpercata has been sending its townspeople north for decades. But as locals grapple with a pandemic that has killed jobs, battered Brazil's currency and sparked double-digit inflation, a piecemeal migration from this poor, okra-farming area has become an exodus.

ON THE RIO MADEIRA, Brazil (AP) — Hundreds of barges of illegal miners dredging for gold were navigating along the Madeira River in the Brazilian Amazon on Friday, and researchers said they posed a threat of pollution — including toxic mercury — for the broader environment.

The barges were spotted this week by the municipality of Autazes, some 120 kilometers (70 miles) from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state.

SAO PAULO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Brazilian health regulator Anvisa recommended on Friday that travel be restricted from some African countries due to the detection of a new COVID-19 variant, but President Jair Bolsonaro appeared to dismiss such measures.

Anvisa said its recommendation, which would need government approval to be implemented, was to immediately suspend flights from South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

The EU and Britain are already tightening border controls as researchers look into whether the new mutation is vaccine-resistant. 

SAO PAULO (AP) — Carlos Arthur Nuzman, the head of the Brazilian Olympic Committee for more than two decades, was sentenced to 30 years and 11 months in jail for allegedly buying votes for Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympics.

The ruling by Judge Marcelo Bretas became public Thursday.

Nuzman, who also headed the Rio 2016 organizing committee, was found guilty of corruption, criminal organization, money laundering and tax evasion. The 79-year-old executive won’t be jailed until all his appeals are heard.

He and his lawyer did not comment on the decision.

BRASILIA, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Brazil has administered more than 300 million shots of COVID-19 vaccines since launching its vaccination campaign in January, the Health Ministry said Friday.

Some 157.6 million people have received a first dose, and 129.8 million are fully vaccinated, having received either both doses or a single-dose vaccine, representing 73.3 percent of the target population.

"With this milestone, we can say that the COVID-19 vaccination campaign is the largest this country has ever seen," Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The area deforested in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high after a 22% jump from the prior year, according to official data published Thursday.

The National Institute for Space Research’s Prodes monitoring system showed the Brazilian Amazon lost 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest in the 12-month reference period from Aug. 2020 to July 2021. That’s the most since 2006.