Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The reduction of Brazil's basic interest rate Selic will save the Brazilian government 110 billion reals (26.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020, President Jair Bolsonaro said on Friday.

"Next year, we will pay 110 billion reals less in interest rates due to the fall in the Selic rate," the president told reporters. "We are recuperating Brazil. It is not an easy task."

The Selic rate has been cut four times this year from 6.5 percent to record-low 4.5 percent.

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s Congress late on Tuesday approved the federal government’s budget for next year, based on projected economic growth of 2.32%, with the bill passing to President Jair Bolsonaro for final approval.

The budget totals 3.867 trillion reais ($921.50 billion) with 917.1 billion reais allotted for refinancing public debt.

It also makes provision for raising the minimum monthly wage to 1,031 reais ($246) from 998 reais.

ALTAMIRA, Brazil (AP) — Edizangela Alves Barros believed that being forced to relocate to make way for a mammoth dam in Brazil’s Amazon would mean a brighter future for her family.

Instead, their newly built settlement has more expensive electricity bills and intermittent public lighting -- a cruel irony for a community just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the world’s third-biggest hydroelectric dam.

“We left our wooden houses to live in concrete houses, but our economic situation got worse,” Alves Barros, a mother of five, said in an interview.

SAO PAULO, Dec 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon jumped to the highest level for the month of November since record-keeping began in 2015, according to preliminary government data published on Friday.

Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest totalled 563 square km in November, 103 per cent more than in the same month last year, according to the country’s space research agency INPE.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday called young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg a “brat” after she expressed concern about the slayings of indigenous Brazilians in the Amazon.

Bolsonaro questioned the coverage news media have given Thunberg, 16, who on Sunday tweeted a link to a story about the murder of two indigenous people in Brazil’s Maranhao state.

BRASILIA, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday hailed the upcoming launch of Sino-Brazilian satellite CBERS-4A from a base in Taiyuan, capital city of northern China's Shanxi province.

"This coming 20th (of December), the CBERS-4A satellite, as well as the Floripasat nanosatellite, will be launched from China for diverse surveillance purposes," Bolsonaro said via Twitter.

The CBERS-4A, built in part with Brazilian technology, "is part of a cooperation agreement with China dating from 1988," the president added.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday denied his administration has purposely devalued the currency to boost exports, as his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump has alleged.

"We are not artificially raising the price of the dollar," Bolsonaro told reporters.

On Monday, Trump said via Twitter he wanted to reimpose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Argentina and Brazil to compensate for their devaluing their currencies, presumably to better compete in the international market.

BRASÍLIA, Nov 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil released revised statistics showing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest surpassed 10,000 sq km in the year to July 2019, the highest in more than a decade.

The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said last week that satellite data showed 9,762 sq km were cleared of trees in the 12-month period, an increase of 29.5 per cent.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Without offering proof, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday said actor Leonardo DiCaprio had funded nonprofit groups that he claimed are partly responsible for fires in the Amazon this year.

Bolsonaro’s remarks about the American actor were part of a wider government campaign against environmental nonprofit groups operating in Brazil.

“DiCaprio is a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money to set the Amazon on fire,” the president said to supporters in Brasilia.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday congratulated Uruguay's president-elect Luis Lacalle Pou over phone on his victory in the election, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"President Bolsonaro wished success to President Lacalle Pou in carrying out the mandate granted by the Uruguayans and affirmed his willingness to work towards the wellbeing of both nations," said the statement.

Bolsonaro also invited Lacalle Pou to visit Brazil soon, it said.