The Jim Bakker Show

Brazil may widen 2018 deficit goal as recovery disappoints: sources

Brazil's President Michel Temer listens to questions from the media during LAAD, the biggest military industry expo in Latin America in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

By Alonso Soto and Marcela Ayres

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s government could widen its fiscal deficit target for 2018 as revenue collection remains weak given the slow pace of economic recovery, two officials involved in the policy discussion said on Wednesday.

It was the first time members of Brazil’s economic team have acknowledged a possible change to the primary deficit goal of 79 billion reais ($25.54 billion) for next year, amid efforts by the administration to rebalance its accounts after nearly three years of recession.

“We are keeping 79 billion but with the tendency to revise it,” said one of the officials, who asked for anonymity because he is not allowed to speak publicly. “We will need to seek extraordinary revenues in 2018.”

The market is forecasting a deficit of 118.3 billion reais next year, according to estimates collected by the finance ministry.

President Michel Temer was forced to cancel payroll tax breaks for 50 sectors and freeze 42 billion reais in budget spending to meet this year’s deficit goal of 139 billion reais.

A painfully slow recovery from the country’s deepest recession ever has undermined tax collection and called into question Temer’s capacity to significantly reduce a deficit that cost Brazil its investment grade rating.

The official said the government has ruled out tax increases to meet this or next year’s goals, but stressed authorities will have to seek one-off revenues such as concession fees and the sale of state assets.

To meet this year’s budget, the government considered increasing the Pis/Cofins federal taxes on gasoline, but political pressure forced Temer to backtrack.

With elections looming in 2018 and a sweeping corruption investigation ensnaring dozens of politicians, Temer’s allies in Congress are calling for more action to revive the economy.

A slew of negative data in January raised concerns, but the government still believes the economy will return to positive territory in the first quarter, the official said.

To alleviate its finances this year the government aims to collect more than 10 billion reais in revenues from a program to give amnesty to Brazilians who pay taxes and fines on undeclared assets held abroad, the official said.

The government has until April 15 to deliver its 2018 budget guidelines officially setting its primary deficit goal for next year.

($1 = 3.0928 reais)

(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

Chinese supermarkets pull Brazil meat from shelves as food safety fears grow

A customer chooses a meat product at Sun Art Retail Group's Auchan hypermarket store in Beijing, China, November 9, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

By Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) – Some of China’s largest food suppliers have pulled Brazilian beef and poultry from their shelves in the first concrete sign that a deepening scandal over Brazil’s meat processing industry is hitting business in its top export market.

The moves by Sun Art Retail Group <6808.HK>, China’s biggest hypermarket chain, and the Chinese arms of global retail giants Wal-Mart Stores Inc <WMT.N> and Metro AG <MEOG.DE> come days after China temporarily suspended Brazilian meat imports.

Safety fears over Brazilian meat have grown since police accused inspectors in the world’s biggest exporter of beef and poultry of taking bribes to allow sales of rotten and salmonella-tainted meats.

A spokeswoman for Sun Art Retail, which operates 400 Chinese hypermarkets, said on Wednesday the chain had removed beef supplied by top Brazilian exporters BRF SA <BRFS3.SA> and JBS SA <JBSS3.SA> from its shelves from Monday. Brazilian beef accounts for less than 10 percent of Sun Art’s beef supply, she said.

Wal-Mart has also removed Brazilian meat products from its stores, a person familiar with the matter said. He declined to be quoted because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Germany’s Metro has withdrawn Brazilian chicken legs and wings from its Chinese stores, said a manager, who declined to be named as he was not allowed to speak to media. The retailer, with 84 stores in China, does not sell Brazilian beef.

JD.com<JD.O>, one of China’s biggest online retailers, said in an emailed statement it had also removed all listings for imported Brazilian meat and is reviewing orders in process.

While Brazilian officials sought late on Tuesday to reassure consumers that the investigation had revealed only isolated incidents of sanitary problems, the reaction by Chinese retailers suggests that the probe could have far-reaching repercussions for the world’s top meat exporter.

Chinese consumers appeared largely unconcerned or unaware of the scandal in Brazil, with few people commenting on the issue on the country’s vibrant social media networks.

But the country has been hit by its own safety scandals in the past, making retailers sensitive to any potential risks.

“We removed the product already on March 20,” said Sun Art’s spokeswoman, noting it was ahead of the Chinese government’s first official comment on the issue.

Brazil is the top supplier of beef to China, accounting for about 31 percent of its imports in the first half of last year. Much of it is used in canteens and foodservice and branded Brazilian beef is less prominent in supermarkets than Australian beef.

Importers are expected to wait a few more days before seeking out alternative supplies, which will likely be more costly than Brazil’s.

“It’s a 45-day lead-time to get any product here. What if they lift the ban by the end of the week?” said an industry source who declined to be identified.

Hong Kong, the second-biggest buyer of Brazilian meat last year, has also issued a ban on imports, following similar steps by Japan, Canada, Mexico and Switzerland.

Major Hong Kong supermarket chain PARKnSHOP said it had removed Brazilian pork, beef and chicken from shelves.

“To cater for the needs of customers, we will increase the supply of meat and poultry products from other countries,” it said in a statement, without elaborating.

(This story was refiled to remove extraneous words from headline)

For a graphic on Brazil meat scandal, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/BRAZIL-CORRUPTION-FOOD/010040820J5/BRAZIL-MEAT.jpg

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Dominique Patton; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Susan Thomas)

Brazilian corruption probe sends politicians running for cover

A general view of Brazil's National Congress during sunrise in Brasilia, Brazil March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian politicians are scrambling to negotiate an amnesty for illicit funding as part of efforts to shield themselves from a widening graft probe that has engulfed President Michel Temer’s government and the Congress.

Lawmakers have for months sought a legislative slight-of-hand to evade the rapidly expanding “Car Wash” investigation that has exposed systematic corruption on contracts at state enterprises, particularly oil firm Petrobras.

Panic in Brasilia hit fever pitch this week after Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot, the country’s top prosecutor, called for investigations into bribery and political kickbacks that reportedly target six cabinet ministers and over 100 lawmakers.

The scandal has reached into Temer’s inner circle and, though he is not a target of investigation, threatens his survival and the fate of proposed reforms to curb an untenable budget deficit and pull Brazil out of its worst recession.

The corridors of Congress emptied on Wednesday – the day after Janot’s request to the Supreme Court was made public – as the political class was convulsed by speculation over who would be on the secret list and how to avoid joining more than 80 businessmen and politicians already in jail.

Prosecutors say they are well aware of the efforts to confound their investigation, but remain confident that rising public indignation and the weight of evidence of various crimes will ensure those responsible are brought to justice.

“There are easily more than 100 politicians we have asked the Supreme Court to be investigated,” a senior member of the prosecution team said. “When secrecy is lifted and the details made public, we’ll have some turbulent days.”

Lawmakers told Reuters the thrust of behind-the-scenes negotiations is aimed at an amnesty for the widespread practice of obtaining undeclared campaign funds under the table from private companies.

That would entail a new law to make the practice, known as “caixa dois,” a crime but which would prevent retroactive punishment, effectively pardoning anyone guilty of the practice to date.

“They are trying to put this to the vote, but I don’t think they will have the courage to pull this off,” said Green Party Deputy Antonio Carlos Thame, an anti-corruption campaigner.

Anyone supporting the bill, which has no official sponsor, would face the wrath of an enraged Brazilian electorate in next year’s elections. Two attempts to discretely push the measure through the lower house failed last year.

“It’s an insult to public opinion. The intention is clearly to obstruct the Car Wash investigation,” said leftist Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, who has sponsored a bill to abolish court prerogatives for politicians.

ANTI-CORRUPTION OUTCRY

Janot’s request for investigations – the biggest to date in the three-year-old probe – stemmed from 950 depositions given in December by 77 executives from the Odebrecht construction conglomerate.

The company in December signed the world’s largest leniency deal with Brazilian, U.S. and Swiss prosecutors and admitted bribing politicians across Latin America and in Africa.

Carlos Lima, a federal prosecutor who has helped lead the probe, told Reuters he thinks upward of 350 new investigations could stem from the Odebrecht testimony.

Adding to the worries in Brasilia is mounting public pressure on Congress to abolish the “special forum” rules that almost guarantee impunity for politicians.

That law means politicians, members of the executive branch and thousands of other officials can only be investigated if the Supreme Court gives permission.

Any trial must then play out in the over-burdened top court, where cases drag on for years and less than 1 percent of politicians get convicted.

Supreme Court justices are proposing the prerogative be curbed or eliminated, but lawmakers under investigation, including the government’s leader in the Senate, Romero Jucá, are insisting only Congress can make that change.

Even if politicians can avoid conviction, many are conscious that the reputational damage inflicted by the scandal may thwart their hopes of reelection next year. That has put electoral reform back on the agenda.

The favored proposal is to move to a system of closed lists in which voters would cast ballots for parties and not individual candidates. That would allow politicians implicated in the investigation to escape the direct wrath of voters.

Despite that, Senator Rodrigues expects voters to expel tainted lawmakers in 2018, resulting in a renewal of Congress from where a more honest generation of leaders will arise.

Lima, the prosecutor based in southern Brazil, was also phlegmatic about lawmakers efforts to create an amnesty for ‘caixa dois’: even if they pull it off, many of those facing investigation would have to answer for other crimes, he said.

“They would likely face a trial regardless,” Lima said, adding that the Odebrecht testimony – once it is made public – will make it clear that bribery was endemic in public life.

“The political class needs to understand how this amnesty of corruption would be viewed by the population,” Lima said. “It would be a crime against the Brazilian people.”

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Paul Simao)

Brazil workers protest against pension reform, disrupt transport

Protestors partially block the main avenue during a strike against Brazilian Social Welfare reform project from government, in Sao Paulo, Brazil March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian civil servants, rural workers and labor confederations staged nationwide demonstrations on Wednesday against President Michel Temer’s pension reform plan, with hundreds of protesters occupying the premises of the finance ministry in the capital Brasilia.

Bus and subway services were partially disrupted in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the country’s most populous cities. Drivers remained stranded because of small street demonstrations across several major avenues in São Paulo’s eastern, southern and northern corners.

In Brasilia, more than 1,500 people from peasant and homeless groups held protests at the finance ministry, the Landless Peasant Movement said in a statement.

Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said some damage occurred inside the ministry, without providing details.

“Several floors of the building were invaded because of this strike,” Meirelles told reporters in Brasilia.

The demonstrations reflect the deep ideological divide among Brazilians as Temer seeks to pass the nation’s most ambitious platform of economic reforms in two decades.

Leaders in Temer’s 22-party alliance say capping pension benefits would be a key step to pull the country out of its worst recession on record.

Last week, Temer acknowledged that his administration would have to negotiate with Congress to win passage of the pension reform, which would establish a minimum age of retirement and scale back benefits for civil servants.

Still, senior lawmakers have said there is not much room for changes to Temer’s original proposal if the country wants to reduce a record budget deficit that is putting the brakes on an economic recovery and hampering investor confidence.

Public transport workers in the cities of Recife, Curitiba and Belo Horizonte were also striking.

(Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Additional reporting bY Marcela Ayres iN Brasilia; Editing by W Simon and Lisa Von Ahn)

Carnival party over, Brazil returns to reality of political crisis

A reveller from Mangueira samba school performs during the second night of the carnival parade at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

By Anthony Boadle and Lisandra Paraguassu

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Carnival revelers were still dancing in the streets of Brazilian cities on Wednesday but for President Michel Temer’s government it was back to the reality of mounting corruption allegations that threaten its survival.

“Out with Temer” was a frequent chant against the unpopular president during the annual celebrations across a country hit by record unemployment and fed up with its political leaders.

On Wednesday afternoon the jailed former CEO of Brazil’s biggest engineering group, Marcelo Odebrecht, was questioned by a judge investigating donations made to Temer’s 2014 campaign, when he was the running mate for leftist leader Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached last year.

A source with access to Odebrecht’s deposition said he confirmed an illegal payment to Rousseff’s campaign manager Joao Santana, but added that he could not say if the then-president or her running mate knew about it.

Odebrecht said former finance minister Guido Mantega negotiated under-the-table donations for the 2014 campaign that totaled 300 million reais, but he denied they were bribes to obtain government contracts, the source said.

Odebrecht, who is seeking leniency to lower a 19-year sentence for corruption and money-laundering, said Temer did not directly request a donation at a dinner in 2014, though the matter was discussed in a general way.

The massive investigation into bribery and political kickbacks, dubbed Operation Car Wash, threatens to bring down members of Temer’s inner circle and has generated political uncertainty that is undermining business confidence and prolonging Brazil’s two-year recession.

Electoral court judge Herman Benjamin is seeking to determine if a 10 million reais ($3.2 million) contribution allegedly sought by Temer was paid from graft money, as claimed by another Odebrecht executive in plea bargain testimony.

Temer has said the donation was legal and duly registered, but Benjamin could recommend annulling the Rousseff-Temer ticket, which would lead to the president’s removal and election of a new leader by Congress if it is upheld by the full court.

The graft scandal endangers Temer’s efforts to push unpopular austerity reforms through Congress aimed at curbing a growing budget deficit that cost Brazil its investment grade credit rating in 2015.

“The President’s biggest challenge now is to prevent the Car Wash investigation paralyzing his reform agenda in Congress,” a Temer aide told Reuters, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the government’s worries.

The crisis will deepen in the next few weeks when Brazil’s top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot will ask the Supreme Court to make public plea bargain statements of 77 Odebrecht executives who are expected to name up to one-third of Brazil’s federal lawmakers for taking kickbacks.

Among the politicians at risk is Temer’s chief of staff, Eliseu Padilha, who is on medical leave after prostate surgery but will have to face questions about a package of 1 million reais he allegedly requested as part an undeclared contribution from Odebrecht.

A lawyer and longtime friend of Temer’s, José Yunes, has approached prosecutors to confirm the package was handed over at his office for Padilha but that he had no idea that it contained cash, leaving the chief of staff in a difficult position.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Brazil’s worst-ever recession likely extended into fourth quarter

Shoppers walk in a mall in Refice, northeast Brazil, May 5, 2010. REUTERS/Bruno Domingos

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s economy probably contracted for an eighth straight quarter at the end of 2016, offering further proof that Latin America’s largest economy has been in its worst recession ever, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.

Gross domestic product probably shrank 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter from the third after seasonal adjustments, according to the median forecast of 16 economists. Brazil’s GDP contracted 0.8 percent in the third quarter.

Brazil’s economy is expected to have contracted 3.5 percent in 2016, after a decline of 3.8 percent in 2015. Brazil has never experienced such a long and deep period of recession, at least since records began more than a century ago.

The recession has left nearly 13 million people unemployed and caused a record number of bankruptcy filings. It also contributed to the ousting of former President Dilma Rousseff last year and to the low approval ratings of her successor, President Michel Temer.

The fourth-quarter GDP numbers will be released on March 7.

Leading indicators have suggested the economy is finally emerging out of recession in the first quarter of 2017, Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told Reuters earlier this week. The central bank has been cutting interest rates at a rapid pace as inflation falls, which is expected to help boost growth.

The recovery, however, is expected to be very slow. The median expectation of economists in a weekly central bank survey projected a GDP expansion of 0.5 percent in 2017.

Although this recession has been the deepest in Brazil’s history, it has not been as dramatic as other crises in the country’s turbulent economic past. Previous downturns were often marked by debt crises, capital flights, hyperinflation and mass migration, none of which happened during the current recession.

Brazil’s economy probably shrank 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter from a year before, according to the poll.

(Reporting by Silvio Cascione; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Brazil set to keep aggressive pace of rate cuts to salvage economy

A view of Brazil's Central Bank in Brasilia, Brazil, September 15, 2016. Picture taken September 15, 2016. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

By Alonso Soto

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s central bank will likely maintain its aggressive pace of interest rate cuts on Wednesday despite some calls to further step up monetary easing to rescue an economy mired in recession.

The bank’s 9-member monetary policy committee, known as Copom, will likely cut its benchmark Selic rate <BRCBMP=ECI> by 75 basis points to 12.25 percent, according to all but one of the 54 economist surveyed by Reuters last week.

Unions and business groups have demanded a cut of 100 basis points to reduce some of the world’s highest borrowing costs, which they say could undermine a still feeble recovery.

A rapid drop in inflation, which could end the year below the 4.5 percent official target, has strengthened the case for a bolder rate cut after the bank surprised markets by cutting more than expected at its last meeting.

The recent appreciation of the real currency <BRBY> has analysts betting on more aggressive rate cuts ahead.

“We think there is a growing case for a bolder cut of 100 basis points– if not now, then at the next policy meeting,” economists with BNP Paribas wrote in a note to clients.

Central bank chief Ilan Goldfajn has signaled policymakers would maintain the current pace of rate cuts, but that future monetary easing would hinge on the approval of austerity reforms to ease inflationary pressures.

Brazil’s recession, the worst in its history, has left millions unemployed and bankrupted hundreds of companies, raising pressure on Goldfajn to lower rates.

Facing a grueling fiscal crisis President Michel Temer is relying on falling interest rates to exit a recession that threatens to stretch into a third year.

However, the sharp drop in inflation has sparked a debate inside his administration over whether the government’s 2019 inflation target, decided in June, should be set at a lower level. That could slow the pace of monetary easing.

Brazil introduced an inflation rate target in 1999. The current 4.5 percent goal was first adopted for 2005, originally with a tolerance margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. In 2015, the government narrowed the range to plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Brazil races against time to save drought-hit city, dying crops

By Anthony Boadle

CAMPINA GRANDE, Brazil (Reuters) – The shrunken carcasses of cows lie in scorched fields outside the city of Campina Grande in northeast Brazil, and hungry goats search for food on the cracked-earth floor of the Boqueirao reservoir that serves the desperate town.

After five years of drought, farmer Edivaldo Brito says he cannot remember when the Boqueirão reservoir was last full. But he has never seen it this empty.

“We’ve lost everything: bananas, beans, potatoes,” Brito said. “We have to walk 3 kilometers just to wash clothes.”

Brazil’s arid northeast is weathering its worst drought on record and Campina Grande, which has 400,000 residents that depend on the reservoir, is running out of water.

After two years of rationing, residents complain that water from the reservoir is dirty, smelly and undrinkable. Those who can afford to do so buy bottled water to cook, wash their teeth with, and even to give their pets.

The reservoir is down to 4 percent of capacity and rainfall is expected to be sparse this year.

“If it does not fill up, the city’s water system will collapse by mid-year,” says Janiro Costa Rêgo, an expert on water resources and hydraulics professor at Campina Grande’s federal university. “It would be a holocaust. You would have to evacuate the city.”

Brazil’s government says help is on the way.

REROUTING THE RIVER

After decades of promises and years of delays, the government says the rerouting of Brazil’s longest river, the São Francisco, will soon relieve Campina Grande and desperate farmers in four parched northeastern states.

Water will be pumped over hills and through 400 kilometers of canals into dry river basins in Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, and Paraíba, the small state of which Campina Grande is the second-biggest city.

Begun in 2005 by leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the project has been delayed by political squabbles, corruption and cost-overruns of billions of dollars.

Brazil’s ongoing recession, which economists calculate has shrunk the economy of the impoverished northeast by over four percent during each of the past two years, made things even worse.

Now, President Michel Temer is speeding up completion of the project, perhaps his best opportunity to boost support for his unpopular government in a region long-dominated by native-son Lula and his leftist Workers Party.

In early March, Temer plans to open a canal that will feed Campina Grande’s reservoir at the town of Monteiro. The water will still take weeks to flow down the dry bed of the Paraíba river to Boqueirão.

With the quality of water in Campina Grande dropping by the day, it is a race against time.

Professor Costa Rêgo says the reservoir water will become untreatable by March and could harm residents who cannot afford bottled water.

Helder Barbalho, Temer’s minister in charge of the project, says the government is confident the water will arrive on schedule.

“We have to deliver the water by April at all costs,” he said.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change has worsened the droughts in Brazil’s northeast over the last 30 years, according to Eduardo Martins, head of Funceme, Ceará state’s meteorological agency.

Rainfall has decreased and temperatures have risen, increasing demand for agricultural irrigation just as water supplies fell and evaporation accelerated.

Costa Rêgo blames lack of planning by Brazil’s governments for persistent and repeated water crises, shocking for a country that boasts the biggest fresh water reserves on the planet.

The reservoir supplying São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and a metropolitan region of 20 million people, nearly dried up in 2015. The capital, Brasilia, resorted to rationing this year.

In Fortaleza, capital of Ceará and the northeast’s second largest city, the vital Castanhão reservoir is down to 5 percent of its capacity.

While that city will also get water from the São Francisco project, it will not arrive until at least year-end because contractor Mendes Junior abandoned work after being implicated in a major corruption scandal.

“Water from the São Francisco river is vital,” Ceará Governor Camilo Santana told Reuters. He said the reservoir can supply Ceará only until August.

After that, the state must use emergency wells and a mandatory 20 percent reduction in consumption to keep Fortaleza taps running until water arrives.

RATIONING

Ceará has had to cut back on irrigation, hurting flower and melon exporters, cattle ranchers and dairy farmers. They stand to flourish when the transfer comes through, but quenching the thirst of the cities will take priority.

In Campina Grande, a textile center, companies including industry leaders Coteminas and Alpargatas have curtailed expansion plans and drastically cut back consumption by recycling the water they use.

There, too, new water will first go towards solving the crisis in Campina Grande and surrounding towns. Only then will officials think about agriculture.

“First we have to satisfy the thirst of urban consumers. Only then can we think of producing wealth,” said Joao Fernandes da Silva, the top water management official in Paraíba.

Rationing has particularly hurt poorer urban families. Many have no running water or water tanks and instead store water in plastic bottles.

For those who have waited decades for the São Francisco transfer, they will believe it only when they see the water flow.

Brito said he and his neighbors survive on the social programs that were the hallmark of Lula and his Workers Party administration. Though tainted by corruption allegations, Lula remains Brazil’s most popular politician ahead of presidential elections next year.

“Without the Bolsa Familia program, we would be dying of hunger,” said Brito, who believes shortages could persist even after the river transfer. “It’s political season again, so they promise us water, just for our votes.”

(Additional reporting by Ueslei Marcelino and Sergio Queiroz; Editing by Paulo Prada, Daniel Flynn and Bernadette Baum)

Yellow fever kills 600 monkeys in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) – An outbreak of yellow fever has claimed the lives of more than 600 monkeys and dozens of humans in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest region, threatening the survival of rare South American primates, a zoologist said on Wednesday.

The monkeys, mostly brown howlers and masked titis, are falling out of trees and dying on the ground in the forests of Espirito Santo state in Brazil’s southeast.

“The number of dead monkeys increases every day,” said Sergio Lucena, he said of the impact of the disease’s spread in his state, “We now know that the rare buffy-headed marmoset is also threatened by the yellow fever virus and dying.”

The howler’s sounds closely resemble grunts or barks. It was the silence that fell on the forests that first alerted farmers that something was amiss, sparking specialists to investigate.

The masked titi is considered as “vulnerable” by the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature, which has placed it on its Red List of Threatened Species.

No evidence has so far surfaced of the affliction felling woolly spider monkeys, considered one of the world’s most endangered by the IUCN.

WORST YELLOW FEVER OUTBREAK IN DECADES

Brazil is suffering the worst yellow fever outbreak in decades that has killed at least 69 humans, nearly all in central state of Minas Gerais, where the problems began.

Most people recover from yellow fever after the first phase of infection, which usually involves fever, headache, shivers, loss of appetite and nausea or vomiting, according to the World Health Organization.

Millions of Brazilians have been vaccinated as health authorities scramble to prevent the outbreak from turning into an epidemic. There is no such protection available for monkeys.

Yellow fever is a viral disease found in tropical regions of Africa and the Americas that mainly affects humans and monkeys and is transmitted by the same type of mosquito that spreads dengue and the Zika virus.

Hundreds of thousands of people died from it in the Americas before a vaccine was developed in 1938.

Brazil’s federal health officials are investigating if the latest outbreak is linked to a tailings dam collapse last year in Minas Gerais at the Samarco iron ore mine co-owned by BHP
Billiton and Vale SA.

The dam accident, which polluted the Rio Doce river, is regarded as the country’s worst environmental disaster.

Some scientists have said that calamity may have made the monkeys more susceptible to contracting yellow fever by decimating their habitat and food supplies.

Deep in the jungle, Brazil struggles to battle drug trade

Brazil army soldiers on border with Colombia to combat drug trade

By Alonso Soto

VILA BITTENCOURT, Brazil (Reuters) – In an isolated army outpost deep in the Amazon jungle, Felipe Castro leads 70 soldiers on the frontline of Brazil’s fight against its biggest security threat: the drug trade.

Castro’s platoon patrols a 250 km (155 miles) stretch of the border with the world’s top cocaine producer Colombia in a bid to stem the flow of illegal drugs and arms that is fuelling a war between criminal gangs in Brazil.

“It’s a difficult job but not impossible,” said the gaunt 29-year-old, his face covered in green and black camouflage.

Watching from the bank of the murky Japura river, Castro directs his men as they use a metal speedboat to practise intercepting drug shipments on its fast-moving waters.

The river marks only part of Brazil’s porous border that stretches for nearly 10,000 kms, three times the U.S.-Mexico frontier.

After years of fragile truce, Brazil’s drug gangs have launched a battle for control of lucrative cross-border smuggling routes that has spilled into the country’s gang-controlled jails, sparking the bloodiest prison riots in decades.

More than 130 inmates have been killed so far this year.

In the vast state of Amazonas, the North Family gang has for years dominated the smuggling of cocaine that is shipped to Europe or sold in Brazil’s inner cities in a business believed to be worth $4.5 billion a year.

Brazil is the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine after the United States, according to United Nations data.

Machete-wielding North Family gangs decapitated dozens of inmates of the rival First Capital Command (PCC) in a New Year’s prison massacre that has sparked revenge killings across penitentiaries in northern Brazil.

President Michel Temer’s government is worried the prison violence could spill onto the streets of major cities such as economic hub Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, a major tourist destination.

Temer has vowed to improve military surveillance along the border, but senior commanders acknowledge drugs and arms will continue to flow in.

“Not even the United States has been able to stop drug trafficking along its border with Mexico,” said General Altair Polsin, head of the army’s ground operations command. “You have to tackle consumption to put an end to this.”

The military plans to increase its patrols on the Solimoes River, one of the main smuggling routes, and share intelligence with officials in neighboring Colombia and Peru.

Officers are putting their hopes in a technology upgrade to use infrared sensors and drones for border surveillance.

For this year, Brazil plans to nearly double its budget to about half a billion reais to finance a border technology program known as SISFRON, according to Defense Minister Raul Jungmann.

Updated technology is crucial for the 1,500 soldiers in the 24 garrisons posted along the Amazon border who divide their time searching for drugs with raids on illegal miners, loggers and hunters.

Other Brazilian security agencies fighting drugs and arms trafficking in this isolated swath of the jungle are also stretched.

Amazonas needs an extra 7,000 civil and military police to keep up with the increase in drug activity, according an internal report by the state security secretary.

“We are 30 officers overseeing an area the size of France,” said Marcos Vinicius Menezes, the federal police chief in Tabatinga, a city washed by the Solimoes that borders Colombia and Peru.

“If fighting the drug trade wasn’t enough, we also have to look after the world’s biggest tropical forest.”

(Editing by Daniel Flynn)

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