Brazil

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Terrible and disturbing news.

A man armed with a hatchet has killed four children and wounded at least five others at a nursery in Brazil, authorities have said.

The state’s firefighter corps said the assailant jumped over one of the centre’s walls to get inside.

Those killed were aged between five and seven.

The man later turned himself in at a police station and did not appear to have any connection with the school.

Authorities are searching for a motive, a police detective told television reporters in Blumenau.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/m...ur-children-at-nursery-in-brazil-1458697.html

 

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More on the January 8 riots and coup attempt.

Top Brazilian military leaders declared to police that former President Jair Bolsonaro presented them with a plan to reverse the results of the 2022 election he lost, but they refused and warned him that they would arrest him if he tried it, according to judicial documents released on Friday.

The testimonies of Mr Bolsonaro’s former army and air force commanders before police, and released by the Supreme Court, is the first direct mention to the right-wing leader as the person planning a move to change the results of the 2022 election won by his rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The statement by Mr Bolsonaro’s commanders add to his legal woes as prosecutors seek to find links between the far-right leader and the January 8 2023 riots that trashed government buildings in capital Brasilia one week after Mr Lula’s inauguration.

A federal police report said former army commander Marco Antonio Freire Gomes testified that he and other top military leaders attended several last-minute and unscheduled meetings at the presidential palace after the second round of the 2022 elections “in which then-president Jair Bolsonaro offered possibilities of using legal tools … regarding the electoral process.”

Gen Freire Gomes told police that in one of the gatherings Mr Bolsonaro told the three commanders of his military and his then-defence secretary Paulo Sergio Nogueira he wanted to create a commission to “investigate the confirmation and the legality of the electoral process”.

He added other tools could be used, such as issuing a decree to declare a state of siege.

Gen Freire Gomes said he rejected the idea from the start and told Mr Bolsonaro that such a move “could end in the legal responsibility of the then-president”, according to the federal police document.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/b...os-plan-to-reverse-2022-election-1601965.html

 

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Looks like the killing involved a wider conspiracy.

Federal police in Brazil have arrested the men suspected of ordering the killing of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018.

The assassination of the 38-year-old black, bisexual Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman in a drive-by shooting shook the country profoundly.

Two federal police sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Associated Press that congressman Chiquinho Brazao and his brother Domingos Brazao, a member of Rio state’s accounts watchdog, were detained on suspicion of ordering the hit. Both have connections to criminal groups known as militias, who illegally charge residents for various services, including protection. The sources did not make clear what their suspected motive was.

On Wednesday, Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski said Brazil’s Supreme Court had validated a plea bargain for the gunman who confessed to Franco’s murder after his arrest in 2019. His confession led to Sunday’s arrests.

Rivaldo Barbosa, head of Rio’s police when the murder took place, was also arrested for alleged obstruction of the investigation, the sources said.

Ms Franco worked as an assistant to then-state lawmaker Marcelo Freixo in 2008 as he presided over a special committee investigating militias in Rio’s state assembly.

Mr Freixo’s final report indicted 226 suspected militia members and politicians and government employees, including Domingos Brazao.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-41359879.html

 

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Ancient artists inspired by dinosaur footprints

A team of archaeologists and paleontologists affiliated with several institutions in Brazil has found evidence that ancient artists living in what is now Brazil may have created petroglyphs that were inspired by preserved dinosaur footprints in a shared area. In their project, reported in the journal Scientific Reports, the group studied petroglyphs made between 3,000 and 9,000 years ago.

The research team was working in the Sousa municipality at a site called the Serrote do Letreiro, a rural part of eastern Brazil. Prior work there has shown that the area was ideal for preserving dinosaur footprints, though few bones have ever been found in the region. Because of that, it has proven difficult to identify which types of dinosaurs created the footprints. They have been dated back as far as 40 million years ago, and researchers have found that they represent ornithopods, theropods and sauropod dinosaurs.

In this new effort, the research team found what they describe as "a remarkable assemblage of petroglyphs and dinosaur footprints." Few instances of the two together in the same dig site have ever been found, they note. They also found what they describe as a close relationship between them, suggesting that the artwork created by local people thousands of years ago was likely inspired by the footprints.

The relationship appears evident, they suggest, due to the large numbers of carvings near or next to the footprints, showing that the artists were aware of them. It also shows that ancient peoples in the region were aware of ancient fossils and placed importance on them. ...

https://phys.org/news/2024-03-site-ancient-artists-dinosaur-footprints.html