Brazil

Forest clearance at smallest total since records began in 1988 in success for Lula ahead of presidential run-offDeforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began, new government data shows.But whether this globally important success is maintained or reversed is on a knife edge ahead of a presidential election run-off […]

Lula reverses position on age of responsibility for ‘heinous’ crimes in what many see as a desperate electoral gambitBrazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced that he now supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility for “heinous” crimes from 18 to 16, reversing a longstanding policy in what is widely seen as a desperate […]

Argentina abstained on Thursday in a vote by the UN General Assembly’s Fourth Committee on a Russian-sponsored draft on “contemporary forms of colonialism”, a decision that Buenos Aires province’s government minister, opposition figure Carlos Bianco, linked to President Javier Milei’s alignment with the United States and to Argentina’s strategy […]

Iguazu Falls, an Unesco world heritage site, has reached a record water flow after heavy rains across the river basin. El Niño weather patterns are said to have driven the water flow to hit 10 times the normal amount. Usually the water flow is 1.5m litres per second, but local government registered a flow of 15m litres of water per second.Argentina […]

(TraTraTrax)Two decades of work from producers JLZ, VHOOR, Mu540 and DJ RaMeMes strips the Brazilian genre to its essential parts until it chimes with grime and drillOriginating in 1980s Brazil, baile funk began as a bass-heavy blend of syncopated folk rhythms and hip-hop-influenced sampling, and has since developed into regional styles ranging from the […]

Brazil’s Senate on Wednesday approved, by 75 votes to one, a cut in the maximum working week from 44 to 40 hours with no reduction in pay, ending the so-called 6x1 schedule of six working days and one day off and extending to two the days off for formal-sector workers. The reform, which according to Reuters benefits some 37 million people, comes ten days […]

Congress approves constitutional amendment that bans six-day workweeks, which could affect up to 30 millionBrazil’s congress has approved a constitutional amendment to shorten the working week to a maximum of 40 hours, a move that could affect 30 million workers and that will hand a political victory to the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva […]

Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin has warned Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro that “it is not easy to leave Mercosur”, in response to his criticism of the bloc during the campaign for the October 25 runoff. In the same interview, with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, he said Uruguay would not restore diplomatic relations with […]

The judge who helped convict Jair Bolsonaro is caught up in a crisis that could benefit his son and damage LulaMarina Silva on Flávio Bolsonaro: He will try to finish his father’s ‘perverse project’ to destroy the AmazonThundering to a crowd of thousands of far-right supporters in São Paulo on 7 September, Brazil’s Independence Day, the senator […]

Cocaine seizures in Europe are up more than fivefold in 10 years as a host of cartels take root. A four-month Guardian investigation reveals the true scale of a continent-wide shiftA four-month investigation by the Guardian has revealed that the surge in cocaine trafficking to Europe is directly linked to the expanding presence of Latin American criminal […]

The Brazilian government has blamed deliberate human action for the wave of fires in Amazonas state, where 540 new hotspots were recorded in 48 hours, more than half of those detected in the whole of October 2025, according to the National Institute for Space Research. The situation has led to a state of emergency in 36 municipalities.

Iguazú National Park, in Argentina’s Misiones province, closed access to the falls’ walkways on Monday because of an exceptional rise in the Iguazú River, whose flow exceeded 12,000 cubic metres per second. The flood is part of an episode of heavy rainfall linked to El Niño that has also caused the Uruguay River to burst its banks, with evacuations […]

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva led a large rally on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista on Sunday to relaunch his campaign two weeks before the October 25 runoff, in which he trails Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. “This country cannot lose its democracy,” he told a largely young crowd.

Exclusive: Former Brazilian environment minister warns of destruction as far-right scion favourite to become presidentThe former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva has said that if Flávio Bolsonaro becomes president he will seek to finish the “perverse project” of rampant rainforest destruction initiated by his jailed far-right father.The […]

Installation of eight canopy bridges in Alta Floresta has enabled 15,000 safe crossings by animals including spider monkeys and marmosets – and more bridges are planned elsewhereBy about 7am, with dense fog blanketing the landscape, Gabriel Falquetto had already come across several road-killed animals along the ES-164 highway in Brazil’s Espírito Santo […]