A powerful tornado hit Brazil’s southern state of Parana, killing six people and injuring more than 400 others Friday night, state officials said Saturday.
The tornado, which hit speeds of more than 155 mph, destroyed dozens of homes in Rio Bonito do Iguacu, a town of about 14,000 residents, and prompted the government to declare an emergency in the affected region.
“It destroyed everything. It destroyed the town, houses, schools. What will become of us?” Roselei Dalcandon told AFP as she stood by a pile of rubble that used to be her shop.
Aerial view of destroyed buildings after a tornado hit Rio Bonito do Iguacu, Parana state, Brazil, on Nov. 8, 2025.
Parana State Government/Handout via REUTERS
State officials in a statement said at least one person was missing hours after the tornado touched down. Five of the killed were adults and the sixth was a 14-year-old girl. The number of people missing is expected to rise, officials said.
The government said that 437 people, including children and pregnant women, had received medical attention at hospitals and on-site units. Of those, at least 10 underwent surgery and nine remained in serious condition.
Aerial view of destroyed houses after a tornado hit Rio Bonito do Iguacu, Parana state, Brazil, on Nov. 8, 2025.
Parana State Government/Handout via REUTERS
Civil defense officials estimated that about 90% of the town suffered some damage.
On social media, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed solidarity with the victims.
“We will continue supporting the Paraná population. And providing all the necessary assistance,” he said.
BRASILIA (Reuters) -A five-member panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court formed a majority on Friday to reject former President Jair Bolsonaro’s appeal challenging his 27-years prison sentence for plotting a coup to remain in power after the 2022 presidential election.
Justices Flavio Dino, Alexandre de Moraes and Cristiano Zanin voted to reject the appeal filed by Bolsonaro’s legal team. The remaining members of the panel have until November 14 to cast their votes in the Supreme Court’s system.
The former president will only begin serving his sentence once all appeals are exhausted.
Bolsonaro has been under house arrest since August for violating precautionary measures in a separate case. His lawyers are expected to request that he be allowed to serve his sentence under similar conditions due to health concerns.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito; Writing by Isabel Teles; Editing by Natalia Siniawski)
Nearly 200 nations are gathering this week in Belém, Brazil, to kick off the annual United Nations climate policy summit, but there is one glaring exception: The Trump administration is not sending any high-ranking officials.
California hopes it can fill in the gap. The state, as it usually does, is sending a large delegation to the Conference of the Parties, including first-time attendee Gov. Gavin Newsom and top officials from the California Natural Resources Agency, Department of Food and Agriculture, Air Resources Board, Public Utilities Commission and Governor’s Office of Tribal Affairs.
The state aims to build on its reputation as a global climate leader, sharing its experience with clean energy technology and job creation and showcasing its track record of climate agreements with other countries and regions.
Newsom, who is positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run, told The Times he “absolutely” sees California as a proxy for the U.S. at this year’s conference, which is the main global venue for countries to strengthen their commitments to reducing greenhouse gases.
“California has a responsibility, but also a unique opportunity at this moment, to remind the world that we’re here, that we believe these issues matter, and that there’s an opportunity here to reinforce existing alliances and develop new ones,” the governor said.
California’s strong presence at COP also marks an escalation of Newsom’s ongoing battle with President Trump. The two have clashed over immigration and climate, with the president’s energy and environment agenda often targeting the state. The Trump administration this year canceled funding for major clean energy projects such as California’s hydrogen hub and moved to revoke the state’s long-held authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than the federal government.
But this year’s Nov. 10-21 gathering also comes at a critical moment for the world. It’s the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, a seminal treaty signed at the 2015 COP in which world leaders established the goal of limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels, and preferably below 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C), in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
Most experts and scientists agree that the 2.7 degree target is no longer within reach. The last 10 years have been Earth’s hottest on record, driven largely by greenhouse gas emissions that come from the burning of fossil fuels.
“One thing is already clear: We will not be able to contain the global warming below 1.5 degrees [C] in the next few years,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said at a recent gathering of the World Meteorological Organization. “The overshooting is now inevitable.”
The U.N.’s annual Emissions Gap report released in conjunction with the conference finds that without immediate and aggressive action, the world is on track to warm between 4.14 and 5.04 degrees (2.3 and 2.8 degrees Celsius) over this century.
Yet Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on his first day back in office, a move he also made during his first term as president. In a January executive order he stated that the Paris Agreement and other international climate compacts pose an unfair burden on the U.S. and steer American dollars to other countries.
The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is expected to add an additional 0.18 degree to the latest warming projections, in effect nullifying a small gain made since last year, the U.N. report says. It notes that every fraction of a degree of warming means more losses for people and ecosystems, higher costs to adapt, and more reliance on uncertain techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
However, the report underscores that the technology to deliver big emissions cuts already exists, pointing to booming developments in wind and solar energy, much of which is occurring overseas.
It’s a sector where California can lead, Newsom said, adding that the Trump administration has “doubled down on stupid” by ceding so much ground to China. The Golden State has invested heavily in renewables, battery energy storage and the electrification of buildings and vehicles. California has also set ambitious decarbonizaiton targets and reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 21% since 2000 while its economy has grown 81%.
“We want to continue to tip the scales, and this is about economic growth, this is about jobs, and this is about addressing the other crisis of our time: affordability,” Newsom said. “When you talk about energy efficiency, you’re talking about affordability. When you talk about wind and solar, you’re talking about abundance and you’re talking about affordability.”
California has already helped to spread a lot of real technology. The state’s aggressive emission rules were pivotal in pushing automakers toward electric vehicles, with Toyota largely developing its Prius for California’s market. The state was the first to mandate battery energy storage at its major utilities, helping jump-start the modern grid-battery market, while its cap-and-trade carbon market program has been emulated in places around the world.
State leaders hope to highlight more than their progress at home. In recent years, California has also forged subnational agreements and partnerships with other regions and countries on issues such as delivering clean transportation, cutting pollution and developing hydrogen and renewables. Newsom is expected to sign additional agreements at COP this year, although his team declined to provide a preview of what they will entail.
Among the state’s dozens of existing agreements are a memorandum with Mexico’s Baja California Energy Commission focused on clean ports, zero-emission transportation and grid reliability; and memorandums with several provinces in China on pollution reduction and offshore wind power. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection also has partnerships with several countries that are sharing resources and best practices for managing vegetation and combating wildfires.
Focusing on these actions at the state and regional level has become a key part of COP conferences as the conversation gains urgency and shifts to deployment, according to Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.
“There is a whole other face of the United States — we have a lot of subnational actors, including leading states and cities and forward-looking businesses, who will be at COP showing the rest of the world that the United States does understand that it’s both in the interest of our country, as well as the global interest, to tackle climate change,” Cleetus said.
California’s delegation in Brazil also includes Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, who represented the state at the Local Leaders Forum in Rio de Janeiro this week.
“This year, our federal government is totally missing in action … and the rest of the world needs to understand that America is still in this fight, and we’re moving forward,” Crowfoot said in a briefing.
Crowfoot highlighted California’s carbon market partnership with Quebec and one with Denmark that yielded groundwater monitoring technology that California uses today, among other examples of international efforts.
This year’s COP conference, which is taking place near the Amazon River delta in northern Brazil, is heavily focused on forest restoration and nature-based solutions, which California also focuses on through its 30×30 program to conserve 30% of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030, Crowfoot said. The Golden State already has deep ties to the region stemming from its landmark 2019 Tropical Forest Standard program, which set guidelines on carbon credits awarded for reducing deforestation.
Newsom said that at COP, he will highlight climate action as the defining economic opportunity of the 21st century. He is slated to speak at the Milken Institute’s Global Investors’ Symposium, a gathering of leading investors and business executives, about how California shows that clean energy investments create jobs and profit. Green jobs now outnumber fossil fuel jobs in the state, 7 to 1.
“Were not just talking about this from the perspective of trying to be good citizens,” Newsom said. “We’re also trying to be competitive geopolitical players. We want to dominate in the next big global industry.”
Still, there is much work to be done.
Every five years, parties to the Paris Agreement are required to submit targets for their greenhouse gas emissions. The targets so far have “barely moved the needle,” according to the U.N. report, and the ones handed in this year aren’t nearly aggressive enough.
“It’s devastating to see that now we are definitely going to breach the 1.5 C benchmark,” said Cleetus, of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“But world leaders still have the power to sharply cut these emissions,” she said.
BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Brazil on Thursday unveiled long-awaited details of a plan to pay countries to preserve their tropical forests and announced it had already drawn $5.5 billion in pledges.
The fund is President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s flagship project as he welcomes world leaders to the edge of the Amazon for the United Nations annual climate summit — an effort to draw attention and money to the imperiled rainforest crucial to curbing global warming.
Financed by interest-bearing debt instead of donations, the fund, dubbed the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, seeks to turn the economic logic of deforestation on its head by making it more lucrative for governments to keep their trees rather than cut them down.
Although destroying rainforests makes money for cattle ranchers, miners and illegal loggers, Brazil hopes to convince countries that preserving forests promises richer rewards for the entire world by absorbing huge amounts of planet-warming emissions.
As senior Brazilian officials walked reporters through the fund’s inner workings, Norway pledged $3 billion — the biggest commitment of the day — raising hopes about Lula’s ambitions becoming a reality.
Through investments in fixed-rate assets, the fund aims to issue $25 billion of debt within its first few years before leveraging that into a pot worth $125 billion that can pay developing countries to protect their tropical rainforests.
A list of more than 70 heavily forested countries — from Congo to Colombia — will be eligible for payments as long as they keep deforestation below a set rate. Nations that fail to protect their forests will see their payouts reduced at a punitive rate for every hectare that’s destroyed.
“I was already very excited about this, but now even more so,” Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said in a press conference.
But the fine print on Norway’s announcement — contingent on Brazil raising some $9.8 billion in other contributions — has ramped up the pressure on Brazil to deliver. Other pledges include $1 billion from Indonesia and $500 million from France, along with $5 million from the Netherlands and $1 million from Portugal toward setup costs.
Brazil earlier announced $1 billion to kick off the fund. Officials said they expected to hear about Germany’s contribution on Friday.
But it remained unclear how many other countries would follow suit. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed support for the initiative on Thursday but declined to declare a pledge.
Brazil is also banking on the participation of the private sector after the fund reaches $10 billion, considered enough to start preparing bond issuances.
When asked about possible concerns on Thursday, Norwegian Climate Minister Andreas Bjelland Eriksen said he thought the risks to the fund were “manageable.”
“There is perhaps an even bigger risk of not participating,” he said. “Rainforests are disappearing before our eyes.”
“These initiatives demonstrate a massive and welcome shift in recognizing the central role that Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants and local communities play in protecting the forests that sustain us,” said Wanjira Mathai, managing director for Africa and Global Partnerships at the World Resources Institute, a research organization.
“These commitments could be transformative, but only if governments turn these words into action.”
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Britain’s Prince William expressed optimism on Wednesday about tackling global environmental challenges at a star-studded event in Rio de Janeiro for the fifth edition of his EarthShot Prize.
William’s first visit to Latin America comes shortly before Brazil hosts the UN climate summit COP30 next week.
“I understand that some might feel discouraged in these uncertain times,” William said during the ceremony for the award, founded in 2020 and inspired by a visit to Namibia.
“I understand that there is still so much to be done. But this is no time for complacency, and the optimism I felt in 2020 remains ardent today.”
Named in homage to John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” goal, the award was intended to foster significant environmental progress within a decade that has now reached its midpoint.
The prize, which aims to find innovations to combat climate change, and tackle other green issues, awards five winners 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) each to drive their projects.
Pop stars Kylie Minogue and Shawn Mendes, Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil, Seu Jorge and Anitta, along with former Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel, were among those who appeared or performed at the ceremony.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan also attended.
William will attend the UN climate summit in place of his father, King Charles. On his trip, he announced initiatives for Indigenous communities and environmental activists, and visited landmarks in Rio.
(Reporting by Andre Romani in Sao Paulo and Michael Holden in London; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
When fourth grade teacher Ryan Brazil placed a glass vase on her classroom desk, her students didn’t expect an emotional lesson. But within minutes, that vase became a symbol of how grief fills our hearts and minds, and how compassion helps make space again.
The simple demonstration she shared in a viral Instagram video, now viewed 417,000 times, used pom-poms and a crumpled piece of paper to show her students how grief can fill our hearts and minds. It was a moment of vulnerability that resonated far beyond her classroom, offering a powerful reminder of how empathy takes root when we give children permission to feel.
A vase that became a lesson in empathy
In the video, Brazil begins by explaining that the vase represents her brain and heart. She drops in small pom-poms, each symbolizing the daily things that fill her mental space: noise, questions, mistakes, and ordinary stress. Normally, she tells her students, there’s still room for patience and calm.
Then she adds a crumpled piece of black paper. This, she explains, is grief. When grief enters our lives, it takes up space that once belonged to patience or focus. “Grief takes up space, not just in your heart, but in your brain,” she tells them. “It can make you more tired, less patient, and quicker to feel overwhelmed.”
Brazil shared with Upworthy that she recently lost her sister unexpectedly and wanted her students to understand why she might seem distracted or short-tempered. Instead of hiding her pain, she decided to talk about it, and in doing so, invited her students to do the same.
Afterward, the class drew their own “vases,” filling the inside with feelings and thoughts and the outside with things that help them make space again: kindness, laughter, drawing, talking, resting. Together, they created a collaborative piece that read, “We make space for each other.”
Children experience grief differently than adults. They often feel emotions they can’t yet name, and that can lead to confusion or fear. Research from the Continuity in Education shows that open, age-appropriate conversations about loss help children develop emotional resilience and reduce anxiety.
Similarly, studies published in the Child Mind Institute indicate that when adults model emotional expression and self-awareness, children become better able to regulate their own feelings. Brazil’s vase demonstration gave her students a tangible way to understand this—showing them that emotional capacity is something we all manage, and that it’s okay when the space inside feels smaller.
By bringing her grief into the open, she helped her students see that even grown-ups struggle, and that emotions don’t need to be hidden to be respected.
The comments on Brazil’s video reflect just how deeply the moment resonated across generations and experiences.
“I just want to hug the little person I can hear making little grief noises.” — annccabw
“You are not a therapist, friend. No reason you should’ve worked these kids up like this.” — tonyandjamiediflorio
“We need more of this kind of teaching and how to teach like this. It’s really power to our students. thanks for being vulnerable” — kristyheffnerhilton
“Ugh and not to mention little kids only have a tiny vase (depending their age) so this is where tantrums come from. That’s why spilling their goldfish is just too much to handle. Bc it doesn’t have to be grief. It could be other things taking up their space.” — klrb28
“This touches my heart on so many levels: I carry a 10 year old grieving heart inside me, the age I was when my dad died. He was a teacher, who was loved by students and parents, just as I’m sure you are. I’m a grief professional, educator, and writer for over 20 years and this is one of the most beautiful and clear and extraordinary explanations I have ever heard. Thank you from my grown-up and little grieving heart. ”
The mix of gratitude, debate, and reflection reveals how powerfully grief intersects with learning and parenting. Many viewers saw the vase as a visual metaphor for empathy itself—a reminder that every child and adult carries invisible weight.
What parents can take from the vase metaphor
Ryan Brazil’s lesson offers more than a classroom takeaway. It’s a guide for parents who want to help children navigate big emotions at home.
Create a “heart space” jar: Encourage your child to place drawings, notes, or keepsakes that represent the person or feeling they’re missing. This practice, supported by findings in the Journal of Loss and Trauma, can help externalize emotions and make abstract feelings concrete.
Name what fills your vase: Use Brazil’s metaphor to describe emotional overload in age-appropriate language. Saying “my vase feels really full today” models awareness without shame.
Keep the conversation going: Research from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) shows that ongoing discussions about loss and emotional wellbeing help children build long-term coping skills.
These small actions can turn grief from an isolating experience into a shared process of understanding.
Making space for each other
When Ryan Brazil told her students, “We make space for each other,” she offered a truth that extends well beyond her classroom. Grief can shrink our capacity, but compassion expands it again. By making space for our own feelings, we show our children that theirs are safe too—and that healing often begins when we simply decide to share what we carry.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -EU climate ministers will make a last-ditch attempt to pass a new climate change target on Tuesday, in an effort to avoid going to the U.N. COP30 summit in Brazil empty-handed.
Failure to agree could undermine the European Union’s claims to leadership at the COP30 talks, which will test the will of major economies to keep fighting climate change despite opposition from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Countries including China, Britain and Australia have already submitted new climate targets ahead of COP30.
But the EU, which has some of the world’s most ambitious CO2-cutting policies, has struggled to contain a backlash from industries and governments sceptical that it can afford the measures alongside defence and industrial priorities.
EU members failed to agree a 2040 climate target in September, leaving them scrambling for a deal days before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets other world leaders at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, on November 6.
“The geopolitical landscape has rarely been more complex,” EU climate policy chief Wopke Hoekstra told a gathering of climate ministers in Canada on Saturday, adding that he was confident the bloc would approve its new goal.
“The European Union will continue to do its utmost, even under these circumstances, in Belem to uphold its commitment to multilateralism and to the Paris Agreement,” he said.
A MORE FLEXIBLE EU TARGET
The starting point for talks is a European Commission proposal to cut net EU greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2040, to keep countries on track for net-zero by 2050.
Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic are among those warning this is too restrictive for domestic industries struggling with high energy costs, cheaper Chinese imports and U.S. tariffs.
Others, including the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, cite worsening extreme weather and the need to catch up with China in manufacturing green technologies as reasons for ambitious goals.
The draft compromise ministers will discuss, seen by Reuters, includes a clause demanded by France allowing a weakening of the 2040 goal in future, if it becomes clear EU forests are not absorbing enough CO2 to meet it.
Brussels has also vowed to change other measures to attempt to win buy-in for the climate goal. These include controlling prices in an upcoming carbon market and considering weakening its 2035 combustion engine ban as requested by Germany.
A deal on Tuesday will require ministers to agree on the share of the 90% emissions cut countries can cover by buying foreign carbon credits – effectively softening efforts required by domestic industries.
France has said credits should cover 5%, more than the 3% share originally proposed by the Commission. Other governments argue money would be better spent on supporting European industries than buying foreign CO2 credits.
Support from at least 15 of the 27 EU members is needed to pass the goal. EU diplomats said on Monday the vote would be tight and could depend on one or two flipping positions.
Ministers will try first to agree the 2040 goal, and from that derive an emissions pledge for 2035 – which is what the U.N. asked countries to submit ahead of COP30.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Alexander Smith)
MEXICO CITY — They’re blowing up boats in the high seas, threatening tariffs from Brazil to Mexico and punishing anyone deemed hostile — while lavishing aid and praise on allies all aboard with the White House program.
Welcome to the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, the Trump administration’s bellicose, you’re-with-us-or-against-us approach to Latin America.
Not yet a year into his term, President Trump seems intent on putting his footprint in “America’s backyard” more than any recent predecessor. He came to office threatening to take back the Panama Canal, and now seems poised to launch a military attack on Venezuela and perhaps even drone strikes on cartel targets in Mexico. He vowed to withhold aid from Argentina if this week’s legislative elections didn’t go the way he wanted. They did.
The Navy’s USS Stockdale docks at the Frigate Captain Noel Antonio Rodriguez Justavino Naval Base, near entrance to the Panama Canal in Panama City, Panama, on Sept. 21.
(Enea Lebrun/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Every president comes in promising a new focus on Latin America, but the Trump administration is actually doing it,” said James Bosworth, whose firm provides regional risk analysis. “There is no country in the region that is not questioning how the U.S. is playing Latin America right now.”
Fearing a return to an era when U.S. intervention was the norm — from outright invasions to covert CIA operations to economic meddling — many Latin American leaders are trying to craft please-Trump strategies, with mixed success. But Trump’s transactional proclivities, mercurial outbursts and bullying nature make him a volatile negotiating partner.
“It’s all put Latin America on edge,” said Michael Shifter, past president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. “It’s bewildering and dizzying and, I think, disorienting for everyone. People don’t know what’s coming next.”
In this super-charged update of U.S. gunboat diplomacy, critics say laws are being ignored, norms sidestepped and protocol set aside. The combative approach draws from some old standards: War on Drugs tactics, War on Terrorism rationales and Cold War saber-rattling.
Facilitating it all is the Trump administration’s formal designation of cartels as terrorist groups, a first. The shift has provided oratorical firepower, along with a questionable legal rationale, for the deadly “narco-terrorist” boat strikes, now numbering 14, in both the Caribbean and Pacific.
“The Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,” is how Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, has labeled cartels, as he posts video game-esque footage of boats and their crews being blown to bits.
Lost is an essential distinction: Cartels, while homicidal, are driven by profits. Al Qaeda and other terror groups typically proclaim ideological motives.
Another aberration: Trump doesn’t see the need to seek congressional approval for military action in Venezuela.
“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” Trump said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”
A supporter of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro wearing a T-shirt depicting President Trump and the slogan “Yankee go home” takes part in a rally on Thursday in Caracas against U.S. military activity in the Caribbean.
(Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump’s unpredictability has cowed many in the region. One of the few leaders pushing back is Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who, like Trump, has a habit of incendiary, off-the-cuff comments and social media posts.
The former leftist guerrilla — who already accused Trump of abetting genocide in Gaza — said Washington’s boat-bombing spree killed at least one Colombian fisherman. Petro called the operation part of a scheme to topple the leftist government in neighboring Venezuela.
Trump quickly sought to make an example of Petro, labeling him “an illegal drug leader” and threatening to slash aid to Colombia, while his administration imposed sanctions on Petro, his wife, son and a top deputy. Like the recent deployment of thousands of U.S. troops, battleships and fighter jets in the Caribbean, Trump’s response was a calculated display of power — a show of force designed to brow-beat doubters into submission.
At a rally in support of Colombian President Gustavo Petro in Bogota on Oct. 24, a demonstrator carries a sign that demands respect for Colombia and declares that, contrary to Trump’s claims, Petro is not a drug trafficker.
(Juancho Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Amid the whirlwind turns in U.S.-Latin American relations, the rapid unraveling of U.S.-Colombia relations has been especially startling. For decades Colombia has been the linchpin of Washington’s anti-drug efforts in South America as well as a major trade partner.
Unlike Colombia and Mexico, Venezuela is a relatively minor player in the U.S.-bound narcotics trade, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And yet the White House has cast Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, as an all-powerful kingpin “poisoning” American streets with crime and drugs. It put a $50-million bounty on Maduro’s head and massed an armada off the coast of Venezuela, home to the world’s largest petroleum reserves.
President Trump talks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Oct. 9. Others, from left to right are, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
(Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
An exuberant cheerleader for the shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions-later posture is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has for years advocated for the ouster of left-wing governments in Havana and Caracas. In a recent swing through the region, Rubio argued for a more muscular interdiction strategy.
“What will stop them is when you blow them up,” Rubio told reporters in Mexico City. “You get rid of them.”
That mindset is “chillingly familiar for many people in Latin America,” said David Adler, of the think tank Progressive International. “Again, you’re doing extrajudicial killings in the name of a war on drugs.”
U.S. intervention in Latin America dates back more than 200 years, when President James Monroe declared that the United States would reign as the hemispheric hegemon.
In ensuing centuries, the U.S. invaded Mexico and annexed half its territory, dispatched Marines to Nicaragua and Haiti and abetted coups from Chile to Brazil to Guatemala. It enforced a decades-long embargo against communist Cuba — while also launching a botched invasion of the island and trying to assassinate its leader —and imposed economic sanctions on left-wing adversaries in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Motivations for these interventions varied from fighting communism to protecting U.S. business interests to waging a war on drugs. The most recent full-on U.S. assault against a Latin American nation — the 1989 invasion of Panama — also was framed as an anti-drug crusade. President George H.W. Bush described the country’s authoritarian leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega, as a “drug-running dictator,” language that is nearly identical to current White House descriptions of Maduro.
American Army troops arrive in Panama to depose former ally Manuel Noriega in 1989.
(Jason Bleibtreu/Sygma via Getty Images)
But a U.S. military invasion of Venezuela presents a challenge of a different magnitude.
Venezuela is 10 times larger than Panama, and its population of 28 million is also more than tenfold that of Panama’s in 1989. Many predict that a potential U.S. attack would face stiff resistance.
And if curtailing drug use is really the aim of Trump’s policy, leaders from Venezuela to Colombia to Mexico say, perhaps Trump should focus on curtailing addiction in the U.S., which is the world’s largest consumer of drugs.
To many, the buildup to a potential intervention in Venezuela mirrors the era preceding the 2003 Iraq war, when the White House touted not drug trafficking but weapons of mass destruction — which turned out to be nonexistent — as a casus belli.
Iraqi officers surrender to U.S. troops on a road near Safwan, Iraq, in March, 2003.
(Gilles Bassignac/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
“Somehow, the United States of America has found a way to combine two of its greatest foreign policy failures — the Iraq War and the War on Drugs — into a single regime change narrative,” Adler said.
Further confounding U.S.-Latin American relations is Trump’s personality-driven style: his unabashed affection for certain leaders and disdain for others.
While Venezuela’s Maduro and Colombia’s Petro sit atop the bad-hombre list, Argentine President Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele — the latter the self-described “world’s coolest dictator” — are the darlings of the moment.
President Trump greets Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele as he arrives at the White House on April 14.
(Al Drago/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Trump has given billions of dollars in aid to bail out the right-wing Milei, a die-hard Trump loyalist and free-market ideologue. The administration has paid Bukele’s administration millions to house deportees, while maintaining the protected status of more than 170,000 Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.
“It’s a carrot-and-stick approach,” said Sergio Berensztein, an Argentina political analyst. “It’s fortunate for Argentina that it gets the carrot. But Venezuela and Colombia get the stick.”
Trump has given mixed signals on Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The two leftists lead the region’s largest nations.
Trump has wielded the tariff cudgel against both countries: Mexico ostensibly because of drug trafficking; Brazil because of what Trump calls a “witch hunt” against former president Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing Trump favorite convicted of attempting a coup after he, like Trump, lost a bid for reelection.
Paradoxically, Trump has expressed affection for both Lula and Sheinbaum, calling Lula on his 80th birthday “a very vigorous guy” (Trump is 79) and hailing Sheinbaum as a “lovely woman,” but adding: “She’s so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight.”
Sheinbaum, caught in the crosswinds of shifting policy dictates from Washington, has so far been able to fight off Trump’s most drastic tariff threats. Mexico’s reliance on the U.S. market highlights a fundamental truth: Even with China expanding its influence, the U.S. still reigns as the region’s economic and military superpower.
Sheinbaum has avoided the kind of barbed ripostes that tend to trigger Trump’s rage, even as U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats creep closer to Mexico’s shores. Publicly at least, she seldom shows frustration or exasperation, once musing: “President Trump has his own, very special way of communicating.”
Special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.
LONDON (Reuters) -Prince William heads to Brazil next week for the awards ceremony for his multi-million-dollar environmental prize, hoping to refocus attention away from the scandal of his uncle Andrew and back on the royals’ causes.
William will visit some of Rio de Janeiro’s most famous landmarks on what will be the British heir’s first Latin American trip.
The aim is to turn the spotlight onto a line-up of environmental projects before the annual awards ceremony for the prince’s Earthshot Prize.
The visit comes days after King Charles stripped his younger brother of his title of prince and evicted him from his mansion, banishing his sibling from public life to try to prevent any further damage to the royal brand from Andrew’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
During his three-day trip, William will seek to focus on his main philanthropic environmental cause, which aims to find innovations to combat climate change, and awards five winners 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) each to drive their projects.
William will visit Sugarloaf mountain, the Maracana soccer stadium, the Christ the Redeemer statue and the Copacabana beach where he will play volleyball, a Kensington Palace spokesperson said.
His wife Kate, who is in remission after cancer treatment, will not be joining him.
South America is an uncommon destination for the British royals who tend to focus overseas trips on Europe or the foreign realms where the king is head of state, such as Canada.
William has never been to Brazil or Latin America before, while Charles last went there in 2009.
This year, the Earthshot events will take place a week before the United Nations COP30 climate summit which is also being held in Brazil and which the prince will attend in place of his father.
“With its energy, its people and its iconic landscapes it is the perfect place to celebrate amazing environmental innovation and host our biggest and best Earthshot ever,” Jason Knauf, chief executive of the Earthshot Prize, said.
The winners will be announced at a ceremony on November 5 which will feature a host of celebrities and performances from Australian popstar Kylie Minogue and Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil.
Organisers say the summit surrounding the event will attract more than 1,000 global leaders, some of the world’s biggest philanthropists along with global mayors and world-leading scientists.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
A massive police raid on a drug gang embedded in low-income neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro that left at least 119 people dead drew protests for excessive force Wednesday and calls for the Rio’s governor to resign.
Families of the dead decried what they described as executions by police, while the state government hailed a successful operation against a powerful criminal group that has taken over large swaths of the city.
Dozens of favelas residents gathered in front of the state’s government headquarters shouting “assassins!” and waving Brazilian flags stained with red paint, a day after Rio’s deadliest raid and hours after families and residents laid dozens of dead bodies on a street in one of the targeted communities to show the magnitude of the operation.
BBC News verified several videos showing dozens of bodies laid out in a row in a market area of Rio, in its northern Penha district.
Questions quickly arose about the death count and the state of the bodies, with reports of disfigurement and knife wounds. Brazil’s Supreme Court, prosecutors and lawmakers asked Rio state Gov. Claudio Castro to provide detailed information about the operation.
“This was a massacre,” said Barbara Barbosa, a domestic worker from the Penha complex of favelas, one of the two huge communities targeted in the police operation. She said her son was killed in a prior operation in Penha.
People line up bodies on Sao Lucas Square of the Vila Cruzeiro favela at the Penha complex in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 29, 2025, in the aftermath of Operacao Contencao (Operation Containment).
PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images
“Do we have a death sentence? Stop killing us,” said activist Rute Sales, 56. Many residents came Penha in Rio’s poor, northern zone to the imposing Guanabara Palace on motorbikes.
The toll of 115 suspects and four policemen killed was an increase over what authorities originally said were 60 suspects dead in Tuesday’s raid by about 2,500 police and soldiers in the favelas of Penha and Complexo de Alemao.
Felipe Curi, Rio state police secretary, told a news conference that bodies of additional suspects were found in a wooded area where he said they had worn camouflage while battling with security forces. He said local residents had removed clothing and equipment from the bodies, in what would be investigated as evidence tampering.
“These individuals were in the woods, equipped with camouflage clothing, vests and weapons. Now many of them appeared wearing underwear or shorts, with no equipment, as if they had come through a portal and changed clothes,” Curi said.
Earlier Wednesday, in the neighborhood of Penha, residents had surrounded many of the bodies – collected in trucks and displayed in a main square – and shouted “massacre” and “justice” before forensic authorities arrived to retrieve the remains.
“They can take them to jail, why kill them like this? Lots of them were alive and calling for help,” resident Elisangela Silva Santos, 50, said during the gathering in Penha. “Yes they’re traffickers, but they’re human.”
“They slit my son’s throat”
A day after the police operation paralyzed the city, residents of the Complexo da Penha favela recovered dozens of bodies from a forest on its outskirts, including one that was decapitated, AFP journalists witnessed.
“They slit my son’s throat, cut his neck, and hung the head from a tree like a trophy,” said Raquel Tomas, the mother of the 19-year-old who was found decapitated.
“They executed my son without giving him a chance to defend himself. He was murdered,” she told AFP, her voice shaking.
“Everyone deserves a second chance. During an operation, police should do their job, arrest suspects, but not execute them,” Tomas added.
A woman cries outside Getulio Vargas Hospital shortly after her relative was brought here by police due to injury during a police operation against alleged drug traffickers in the Complexo do Alemao favela where the criminal organization “Comando Vermelho” operates in Rio de Janeiro, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
Silvia Izquierdo / AP
Lawyer Albino Pereira Neto, who represents three families that lost relatives, told AFP some of the bodies bore “burn marks” and that a number of those killed had been tied up.
Some were “murdered in cold blood,” he said.
“We saw executed people”
The tally of suspects arrested stood at 113 – up from 81 cited previously, Curi said. The state government said some 90 rifles and more than a ton of drugs were seized.
Police and soldiers had launched the raid in helicopters, armored vehicles and on foot, targeting the Red Command gang. They drew gunfire and other retaliation from gang members, sparking scenes of chaos across the city on Tuesday. Schools in the affected areas shuttered, a local university canceled classes, and roads were blocked with buses used as barricades.
Rafael Soares, a journalist covering crime in Rio, told BBC News Brasil that the Red Command had been on the offensive in Rio in recent years, reclaiming territory it had lost to its rivals, First Capital Command.
Many shops remained closed Wednesday morning in Penha, where local activist Raull Santiago said he was part of a team that found about 15 bodies before dawn.
“We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up. This level of brutality, the hatred that is spread – there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre,” Santiago said.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Castro to provide information about the police operation and scheduled a hearing with the state governor and the heads of the military and civil police next Monday in Rio.
The Senate’s commission for human rights said it was asking for clarifications from the Rio state government. Meanwhile, Rio prosecutors requested that Castro provide detailed information about the operation and proof that there was no less harmful means of achieving its objectives.
Police officers escort a suspect arrested during the Operacao Contencao (Operation Containment) out of the Vila Cruzeiro favela, in the Penha complex, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 28, 2025.
MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP via Getty Images
And the federal public prosecutor’s office asked the Forensic Medical Institute to ensure that autopsy reports contain full descriptions and photographic and radiographic documentation of all injuries.
Castro said on Tuesday that Rio was at war against “narco-terrorism,” a term that echoed the Trump administration in its campaign against drug smuggling in Latin America.
On Wednesday, Castro called the operation a “success,” apart from the deaths of the four police officers.
Rio’s state government said that the suspects who had been killed had resisted police.
Rio has been the scene of lethal police raids for decades. In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense region, while in May 2021, 28 were killed in the Jacarezinho favela.
But the scale and lethality of Tuesday’s operation are unprecedented. Non-governmental organizations and the U.N. human rights body quickly raised concerns over the high number of reported fatalities and called for investigations.
“We fully understand the challenges of having to deal with violent and well-organized groups such as Red Command,” said U.N. Human Rights Spokesperson Marta Hurtado said.
But Brazil must “break this cycle of extreme brutality and ensure that law enforcement operations comply with international standards regarding the use of force,” she said, adding that the body was calling for full-fledged policing reform.
Late on Wednesday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on X that he had instructed the justice minister and director-general of Federal Police to meet Castro for a meeting in Rio.
Brazil cannot accept that organized crime “continues to destroy families, oppress residents, and spread drugs and violence across cities,” he said.
The operation’s stated objectives were capturing leaders and limiting the territorial expansion of the Red Command gang, which has increased its control over favelas in recent years.
Gang members allegedly targeted police with at least one drone. Rio de Janeiro’s state government shared a video on X of what appeared to show a drone firing a projectile from the sky.
“Drones dropping bombs is now a trend used by heavily armed criminal groups,” Carlos Solar from the Royal United Services Institute told BBC News.
Rio “alone in this war”
Gov. Castro, from the conservative opposition Liberal Party, said Tuesday that Rio was “alone in this war.” He said the federal government should be providing more support to combat crime – in a swipe at the administration of Lula’s leftist administration.
His comments were challenged by the Justice Ministry, which said it had responded to requests from Rio’s state government to deploy national forces in the state, renewing their presence 11 times.
Gleisi Hoffmann, the Lula administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that more coordinated action was needed but pointed to a recent crackdown on money laundering as an example of the federal government’s action on organized crime.
Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski said it was clearly an extremely bloody and violent operation.
“We should reflect on whether this kind of action is compatible with the Democratic Rule of Law that governs us all,” he told journalists on Wednesday.
Criminal gangs have expanded their presence across Brazil in recent years, including in the Amazon rainforest.
Roberto Uchôa, from the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety think-tank, said that criminal gangs have strengthened despite these kinds of operations, suggesting that they are inefficient.
“Killing more than 100 people like this won’t help decrease the Red Command’s expansion. The dead will soon be replaced,” Uchôa said.
About 2,500 Brazilian police and soldiers launched a massive raid on a drug-trafficking gang in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, arresting 81 suspects and sparking shootouts that left at least 60 suspects and four police officers dead, officials said.
The operation included officers in helicopters and armored vehicles and targeted the notorious Red Command in the sprawling low-income favelas of Complexo de Alemao and Penha, police said.
The police operation was one of the most violent in Brazil’s recent history, with human rights organizations calling for investigations into the deaths.
Rio’s state Gov. Claudio Castro said in a video posted on X that 60 criminal suspects were “neutralized” during the massive raid that he called the biggest such operation in the city’s history. Some 81 suspects were arrested, while 93 rifles and more than half a ton of drugs were seized, the state government said, adding that those killed “resisted police action.”
Rio’s civil police said on X that four officers died in Tuesday’s operation. “The cowardly attacks by criminals against our agents will not go unpunished,” it said.
Police officers escort a suspect arrested during the Operacao Contencao (Operation Containment) out of the Vila Cruzeiro favela, in the Penha complex, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 28, 2025.
MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP via Getty Images
Residents scrambled for cover and shops closed their doors amid police claims that the gangs were using drones to fight back, Agence France-Presse reported.
Castro posted a video on X of what he described as a gang-controlled drone launching a projectile from the cloudy sky.
“This is how the Rio police are treated by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones. This is the scale of the challenge we face. This is not ordinary crime, but narcoterrorism,” he said.
State officials said at least 50 of those killed were “indicated by police as suspected of being criminals,” BBC News reported. Dozens of people were injured, including civilians caught in the crossfire, according to the BBC.
The United Nations’ human rights body said it was “horrified” by the deadly police operation, called for effective investigations and reminded authorities of their obligations under international human rights law.
César Muñoz, director of Human Rights Watch in Brazil, called Tuesday’s events “a huge tragedy” and a “disaster.”
“The public prosecutor’s office must open its own investigations and clarify the circumstances of each death,” Muñoz said in a statement.
Footage on social media showed fire and smoke rising from the two favelas as gunfire rang out. The city’s Education Department said 46 schools across the two neighborhoods were closed, and the nearby Federal University of Rio de Janeiro canceled night classes and told people on campus to seek shelter.
Suspected gang members blocked roads in northern and southeastern Rio in response to the raid, local media reported. At least 70 buses were commandeered to be used in the blockades, causing significant damage, the city’s bus organization Rio Onibus said.
The operation Tuesday followed a year of investigation into the criminal group, police said.
Gov. Castro, from the conservative opposition Liberal Party, said the federal government should be providing more support to combat crime – a swipe at the administration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Gleisi Hoffmann, the Lula administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that coordinated action was needed but pointed to a recent crackdown on money laundering as an example of the federal government’s action on organized crime.
Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and a number of ministers met in response to the operation on Tuesday afternoon. Chief of Staff Rui Costa requested an emergency meeting in Rio on Wednesday, with him in attendance as well as Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
Emerging from Rio’s prisons, the Red Command criminal gang has expanded its control in favelas in recent years.
“Russian roulette”
Rio has been the scene of lethal police raids for decades. In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense region, while in May 2021, 28 were killed in the Jacarezinho favela.
While the Tuesday’s police operation was similar to previous ones, its scale was unprecedented, said Luis Flavio Sapori, a sociologist and public safety expert at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais.
“What’s different about today’s operation is the magnitude of the victims. These are war numbers,” he said.
He argued that these kinds of operations are inefficient because they do not tend to catch the masterminds, but rather target underlings who can later be replaced.
“It’s not enough to go in, exchange gunfire, and leave. There’s a lack of strategy in Rio de Janeiro’s public security policy,” Sapori said. “Some lower-ranking members of these factions are killed, but those individuals are quickly replaced by others.”
The Marielle Franco Institute, a nonprofit founded by the slain councilwoman ‘s family to continue her legacy of fighting for the rights of people living in favelas, also criticized the operation.
“This is not a public safety policy. It’s a policy of extermination, that makes the everyday life of Black and poor people a Russian roulette,” it said in a statement.
“Everyone is terrified”
AFP saw police in the Vila Cruzeiro neighborhood of Penha district guarding about 20 young people huddled together and sitting on the sidewalk, heads bowed, barefoot, and shirtless.
“This is the first time we’ve seen drones (from criminals) dropping bombs in the community,” said a Penha resident, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Everyone is terrified because there’s so much gunfire,” she added.
A woman cries outside Getulio Vargas Hospital shortly after her relative was brought here by police due to injury during a police operation against alleged drug traffickers in the Complexo do Alemao favela where the criminal organization “Comando Vermelho” operates in Rio de Janeiro, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
Silvia Izquierdo / AP
Raids in the favelas are common but this was the deadliest one yet. Until now the highest death toll came in a raid in 2021 that left 28 people dead.
Tuesday’s operation ground traffic on many of the seaside city’s main streets to a halt.
“We’re left without buses, without anything, in this chaos and not knowing what to do,” said Regina Pinheiro, a 70-year-old retiree, who was trying to return home.
BRASILIA (Reuters) -Lawyers for former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday filed a motion asking for a review of last month’s Supreme Court ruling sentencing him to more than 27 years in prison for plotting a coup and several other crimes.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia; Writing by Andre Romani; Editing by Kylie Madry)
From the depths of Brazil’s Amazon to Indonesia’s rainforests, some of the world’s most isolated peoples are being squeezed by roads, miners and drug traffickers — a crisis unfolding far from public view or effective state protection.
A new report by Survival International, a London-based Indigenous rights organization, attempts one of the broadest tallies yet, identifying at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups in 10 countries, primarily in the South American nations sharing the Amazon rainforest. Released Sunday, the report estimates that nearly 65% face threats from logging, about 40% from mining and around 20% from agribusiness.
“These are what I would call silent genocides – there are no TV crews, no journalists. But they are happening, and they’re happening now,” said Fiona Watson, Survival’s research and advocacy director, who has worked on Indigenous rights for more than three decades.
The issue often receives little priority from governments, which critics say see uncontacted peoples as politically marginal because they don’t vote and their territories are often coveted for logging, mining and oil extraction. Public debate is also shaped by stereotypes – some romanticize them as “lost tribes,” while others view them as barriers to development.
Survival’s research concludes that half of these groups “could be wiped out within 10 years if governments and companies do not act.”
Who the uncontacted peoples are
Uncontacted peoples are not “lost tribes” frozen in time, Watson said. They are contemporary societies that deliberately avoid outsiders after generations of violence, slavery and disease.
“They don’t need anything from us,” Watson said. “They’re happy in the forest. They have incredible knowledge and they help keep these very valuable forests standing – essential to all humanity in the fight against climate change.”
Survival’s research shows that more than 95% of the world’s uncontacted peoples live in the Amazon, with smaller populations in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These communities live by hunting, fishing and small-scale cultivation, maintaining languages and traditions that predate modern nation-states.
Why contact can be deadly
Groups living in voluntary isolation have “minimal to no contact with those outside of their own group,” said Dr. Subhra Bhattacharjee, director general of the Forest Stewardship Council and an Indigenous rights expert based in Bonn, Germany. “A simple cold that you and I recover from in a week … they could die of that cold.”
Beyond disease, contact can destroy livelihoods and belief systems. International law requires free, prior and informed consent – known as FPIC – before any activity on Indigenous lands.
“But when you have groups living in voluntary isolation, who you cannot get close to without risking their lives, you cannot get FPIC,” Bhattacharjee said. “No FPIC means no consent.”
Her organization follows a strict policy: “No contact, no-go zones,” she said, arguing that if consent cannot be obtained safely, contact should not occur at all.
The Associated Press reported last year on loggers who were killed by bow and arrow after entering Mashco Piro territory in Peru’s Amazon, with Indigenous leaders warning that such clashes are inevitable when frontier zones go unpoliced.
Members of the Mashco Piro Indigenous community, a reclusive tribe and one of the world’s most withdrawn, gather on the banks of the Las Piedras river where they have been sighted coming out of the rainforest more frequently in search of food and moving away from the growing presence of loggers, in Monte Salvado, in the Madre de Dios province, Peru, June 27, 2024.
Survival International/Handout via REUTERS
There have been several other previous reports of conflicts. In one incident in 2022, two loggers were shot with arrows while fishing, one fatally, in an encounter with tribal members.
In 2018, American John Allen Chau was killed after kayaking to a remote Indian island populated by an isolated tribe known for shooting at outsiders with bows and arrows.
How the threats have evolved
Watson, who has worked across the Amazon for 35 years, said early threats stemmed from colonization and state-backed infrastructure. During Brazil’s military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, highways were bulldozed through the rainforest “without due regard” for the people living there.
“The roads acted as a magnet for settlers,” she said, describing how loggers and cattle ranchers followed, bringing gunmen and disease that wiped out entire communities.
A railway line now planned in Brazil could potentially affect three uncontacted peoples, she said, but the rise of organized crime poses an even greater risk.
Across Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, drug traffickers and illegal gold miners have moved deep into Indigenous territories. “Any chance encounter runs the risk of transmitting the flu, which can easily wipe out an uncontacted people within a year of contact,” she said. “And bows and arrows are no match for guns.”
Evangelical missionary incursions have also caused outbreaks. Watson recalled how, under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an evangelical pastor was placed in charge of the government’s unit for uncontacted peoples and gained access to their coordinates. “Their mission was to force contact – to ‘save souls,’” she said. “That is incredibly dangerous.”
Ways to protect uncontacted peoples
Protecting uncontacted peoples, experts say, will require both stronger laws and a shift in how the world views them – not as relics of the past, but as citizens of the planet whose survival affects everyone’s future.
Advocates have several recommendations.
First, governments must formally recognize and enforce Indigenous territories, making them off-limits to extractive industries.
Mapping is crucial, Bhattacharjee said, because identifying the approximate territories of uncontacted peoples allows governments to protect those areas from loggers or miners. But, she added, it must be done with extreme caution and from a distance to avoid contact that could endanger the groups’ health or autonomy.
Second, corporations and consumers must help stop the flow of money driving destruction. Survival’s report calls for companies to trace their supply chains to ensure that commodities such as gold, timber and soy are not sourced from Indigenous lands.
“Public opinion and pressure are essential,” Watson said. “It’s largely through citizens and the media that so much has already been achieved to recognize uncontacted peoples and their rights.”
Finally, advocates say the world must recognize why their protection matters. Beyond human rights, these communities play an outsized role in stabilizing the global climate.
“With the world under pressure from climate change, we will sink or swim together,” Bhattacharjee said.
Governments’ uneven response
International treaties such as the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirm the right to self-determination and to remain uncontacted if they choose. But enforcement varies widely.
In Peru, Congress recently rejected a proposal to create the Yavari-Mirim Indigenous Reserve, a move Indigenous federations said leaves isolated groups exposed to loggers and traffickers.
In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to rebuild protections weakened under Bolsonaro, boosting budgets and patrols. In 2018, footage showed an indigenous man believed to be the last remaining member of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
And in Ecuador, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled this year that the government failed to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples who live in voluntary isolation in Yasuni National Park.
Watson warned that political forces tied to agribusiness and evangelical blocs are now working to roll back earlier gains.
“Achievements of the last 20 or 30 years are in danger of being dismantled,” she said.
In July 2024, photos emerged of the uncontacted tribe searching for food on a beach in the Peruvian Amazon. Survival International said at the time the photos and videos posted showed about 53 male Mashco Piro. The group estimated as many as 100 to 150 tribal members would have been in the area with women and children nearby.
Members of the Mashco Piro Indigenous community, a reclusive tribe and one of the world’s most withdrawn, gather on the banks of the Las Piedras river where they have been sighted coming out of the rainforest more frequently in search of food and moving away from the growing presence of loggers, in Monte Salvado, in the Madre de Dios province, Peru, June 27, 2024.
Survival International/Handout via REUTERS
“This is irrefutable evidence that many Mashco Piro live in this area, which the government has not only failed to protect but actually sold off to logging companies,” Alfredo Vargas Pio, president of local Indigenous organization FENAMAD, said in a statement at the time.
A 2023 report by the United Nations’ special reporter on the rights of Indigenous peoples said Peru’s government had recognized in 2016 that the Mashco Piro and other isolated tribes were using territories that had been opened to logging. The report expressed concern for the overlap, and that the territory of Indigenous peoples hadn’t been marked out “despite reasonable evidence of their presence since 1999.”
What the new report calls for
Survival International’s report urges a global no-contact policy: legal recognition of uncontacted territories, suspension of mining, oil and agribusiness projects in or near those lands and prosecution of crimes against Indigenous groups.
Watson said logging remains the biggest single threat, but mining is close behind. She pointed to the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island, where nickel for electric-vehicle batteries is being mined.
“People think electric cars are a green alternative,” she said, “but mining companies are operating on the land of uncontacted peoples and posing enormous threats.”
In South America, illegal gold miners in the Yanomami territory of Brazil and Venezuela continue to use mercury to extract gold – contamination that has poisoned rivers and fish.
“The impact is devastating – socially and physically,” Watson said.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he had a positive meeting on Sunday with U.S. President Donald Trump, and their respective teams will start “immediately” to discuss tariffs and other matters.
Trump and Lula spoke on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in a meeting to overcome tensions between Brazil and the United States after Trump increased tariffs on U.S. imports of most Brazilian goods to 50 percent from 10 percent in August.
“We agreed that our teams will meet immediately to advance the search for solutions to the tariffs and sanctions against Brazilian authorities,” Lula said in a social media post following the meeting.
Trump had linked the tariff move to what he called a “witch hunt” against Jair Bolsonaro, the South American country’s former president. The U.S. government also put sanctions on a number of Brazilian officials, including Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the trial that led to Bolsonaro’s conviction for attempting a coup.
An Inc.com Featured Presentation
Ahead of the meeting on Sunday though, Trump said he could reach some agreements with Lula.
“I think we should be able to make some pretty good deals for both countries,” Trump said.
Lula previously described the tariff hike as a “mistake”, citing a $410 billion U.S. trade surplus with Brazil over 15 years.
Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said negotiations will start immediately to work on solutions and a meeting with the U.S. delegation was planned for Sunday.
“We will establish a negotiation schedule and establish the sectors we will talk about so that we can move forward,” Vieira told journalists at the summit, adding that Brazil had requested that tariffs be suspended during the negotiation process.
It was not immediately clear if the United States agreed to the request.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were present at the meeting, Vieira said.
“We hope to conclude bilateral negotiations that address each of the sectors of the current American (tariffs on) Brazil in the near future, in a few weeks,” Vieira added.
Bolsonaro was not mentioned in the meeting, said Marcio Rosa, the executive secretary for Brazil’s ministry of development, industry and commerce, who stood next to Vieira.
Higher U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods have begun reshaping the global beef trade, pushing up prices in the United States and encouraging triangulation via third countries such as Mexico, while Brazilian exports to its biggest beef market, China, are booming.
Brazilian beef industry group Abiec said it viewed the meeting between the two leaders as a positive step.
“The understanding between the two countries can preserve the competitiveness of the Brazilian product, guarantee predictability for exporters and expand the presence of (Brazilian) beef in the North American market,” it said in a statement.
Globally, Brazil’s total beef exports, including fresh and processed meat, edible offal and tallow, generated $1.92 billion in revenue in September, with volumes reaching 373,867 metric tons, up 49 percent in value and 17 percent in volume year-on-year.
Brazilian coffee industry group ABIC said it was confident in the historic partnership between the two countries. Brazil is the world’s top coffee producer and exporter, while the United States is the biggest importer.
“The recent meetings between the presidents of the United States and Brazil have been more positive, and at ABIC we are optimistic,” ABIC president Pavel Cardoso said in a statement.
Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Eduardo Simoes; Additional reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by John Mair, David Stanway, Will Dunham and Elaine Hardcastle
(Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday he will run for re-election next year, seeking a fourth term in office.
Speaking during a state visit to Indonesia alongside President Prabowo Subianto, Lula said he remains energized despite his age.
“I’ll be 80, but I have the same energy I had at 30. I will run for a fourth term in Brazil,” Lula said.
His current term ends in late 2026. The leftist leader has already won three presidential elections – in 2002, 2006 and 2022.
Earlier this year, Lula had already hinted a possible re-election, but stopped short of making a formal announcement. His latest remarks came about a year ahead of the 2026 election.
It remains unclear who will be his main challenger.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro, who lost to Lula in 2022, is currently barred from running due to electoral court rulings and was recently sentenced to over 27 years in prison for an alleged coup attempt. He denies wrongdoing and says he will run.
(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Isabel Teles; Editing by Ros Russell)
Armed robbers steal $40 million worth of gold and other metals in airport heist – CBS News
Watch CBS News
A team of armed robbers disguised as police officers stole millions of dollars worth of gold and other metals from an airport cargo terminal in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “CBS This Morning” has the story.
The rare Begonia larorum was rediscovered on Brazil’s Alcatrazes Island after not being seen for more than a century, according to a study.
L. Candisani
Oryx
On a small, remote island off the coast of Brazil, scientists have rediscovered a rare flower not seen in over a century.
Begonia larorum was discovered on Alcatrazes Island in 1920 and never recorded again until researchers stumbled upon a single flower in 2024, according to a study published Oct. 16 in Oryx.
Against the odds, the critically endangered species has survived a century of human disturbances and pressure on the island including agriculture, and military operations, according to the study.
In 2004, an artillery exercise caused a large fire that destroyed an area roughly the size of 30 football fields filled with native vegetation, researchers said.
During a field expedition to the island in February 2024, researchers “found a single individual in the forest” understory and propagated it, creating more plants by using cuttings from that one specimen, at the University of Campinas in São Paulo, according to the study.
The rediscovery allowed researchers to capture the first color photograph of the flower, according to the study. Gabriel Sabino Oryx
Seven months later, the team found a small population of 19 plants, 17 of which had the ability to reproduce “in an open area” on the island prone to invasive grasses and fires, researchers said.
This population gave researchers the opportunity to capture the first color photograph of the flower, according to the study.
As these are the “only 17 reproductive individuals of Begonia larorum known to exist,” researchers said they are concerned about “the species’ genetic diversity and long-term viability.”
However, researchers said there may be other individuals in the unreachable areas of Alcatrazes Island’s “steep inaccessible terrain.”
The island was used by the Brazilian Navy for decades for military exercises which caused significant disruptions to native plants, according to the study. They have since been relocated. Gabriel Sabino Oryx
“Given its restricted range and the threats to its survival, we recommend the species be assessed for inclusion on the global IUCN Red List in addition to maintaining its Critically Endangered status at national level on the Red List of Brazilian Flora,” researchers said.
Researchers also recommend conservation efforts focused on protecting populations on the island as well as cloning the species and housing them in “botanical gardens, greenhouses and collections at independent sites.”
The research team included Gabriel Sabino, Vitor Kamimura, Gabriel Marcusso, Ingrid Koch, Gustavo Shimizu and Fabio Pinheiro.
Lauren Liebhaber covers international science news with a focus on taxonomy and archaeology at McClatchy. She holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University and a master’s degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Previously, she worked as a data journalist at Stacker.
LONDON (Reuters) -Global investors managing over $3 trillion in assets called on governments on Monday to stop and reverse deforestation and ecosystem degradation by 2030, in a statement signed ahead of a U.N. climate conference in Brazil next month.
Around 30 institutional investors including Swiss private bank Pictet Group and Nordic investor DNB Asset Management have so far signed up to the Belém Investor Statement on Rainforests, which is open until November 1.
A report last week found the world is falling far short of the goal of stopping deforestation, with losses of 8.1 million hectares (20 million acres) of forest – an area about the size of England – in 2024 alone, largely driven by agricultural expansion and forest fires.
“As investors, we are increasingly concerned about the material financial risks that tropical deforestation and nature loss pose to our portfolios,” the statement said.
The investors emphasised the need for policies that deliver legal, regulatory, and financial certainty to help protect the forests and safeguard economic stability, said Jan Erik Saugestad, CEO at Nordic firm Storebrand Asset Management.
“Deforestation undermines the natural systems that global markets rely on – from climate regulation to food and water security.”
Earlier this year, the European Union delayed launching its anti-deforestation law by a year after facing opposition from industry and trade partners such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States, who say complying with the rules would be costly and hurt their exports to Europe.
The role of climate sceptic U.S. President Donald Trump in rolling back support for global environmental efforts was also hampering action, said Ingrid Tungen, head of deforestation-free markets at Rainforest Foundation Norway.
“I think Trump has made it more difficult for investors and managers to take climate and biodiversity into account in such a volatile market,” she said.
“All the investors that we are talking to think there is a huge risk for us not taking diversification and climate change into consideration in the long-term, and not just for their own morals, but because that will harm the markets directly and their profits directly.”
(Reporting by Sharon Kimathi; Editing by Nia Williams)
NITEROI, Brazil (AP) — Performers twisted and twirled above the sand on a beach across the bay from Rio de Janeiro in an aerial circus show that sought to draw attention to the widespread problem of violence against women in Brazil.
Six women and two men performed the piece titled “Alone we are petals, together we are roses” for the first time on Saturday in Niteroi city with Rio’s famed landmarks — the Christ the Redeemer statue and Sugarloaf Mountain — in the background.
At the beginning, a woman in a pink bodysuit and with an attitude struts around on stilts. The male artists knock her to the ground. But the victim reappropriates her body by exploring its physical strength and gains courage from her connections with other women. At the end she returns on even higher stilts.
“After we go through all of this, we grow even more. We become stronger. Not that this is a good way of learning how to be a woman, but we end up stepping into it,” said Rosa Caitanya Hamilton Azevedo, a 31-year-old artist who plays the victim’s part and who has also suffered from gender-based violence.
Juliana Berti Abduch, who has also been a victim of this form of violence, created the Suspended Circus Acrobatics project in 2020. The group’s first performance in 2023 focused on domestic violence. She said the new piece isn’t a continuation of that show, but a way to keep addressing and fighting violence in its many forms.
Partaking in the project can be healing for the artists who have been subjected to gender-based violence, who arrive fearful and traumatized, according to Berti Abduch.
“From the moment they start the classes, they begin to overcome their limitations. This helps a lot in life in general. I’m certain that the project helped make the women feel much more secure,” Berti Abduch said after her piece’s debut.
Approximately 100 people gathered to watch the performance, some of whom were passing by and stopped, intrigued by the visually striking sight involving aerial hoops, trapezes and silks, on a beach packed with people lifting weights and playing volleyball.
“I found it impactful,” said Fabiane Curione de Medeiros, who was in the audience. “I think the message — that women need to unite and expose the violence — needs to become a reality.”
More than one in three women in Brazil was a victim of sexual or gender-based violence over the course of a year, according to a 2025 report by the think tank Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, the highest number since records began in 2017. All forms of violence against women have increased since then.
An example of the ongoing struggle for women’s rights in Brazil is the legal status of abortion. While it is permitted in three circumstances, including in cases of rape, in practice women often face significant barriers in accessing these services.
During the performance, a series of alarming statistics are blasted from a nearby amplifier, including the fact that a woman was raped every six minutes in Brazil last year, also according to the forum on public safety.
“The show generates a heavy atmosphere, because we talk about the situation. But we also show that there are paths and strategies to fight against it,” said Hamilton Azevedo.
“The performance in itself is a strategy. We wanted to move away from that place of sadness and hold onto hope that the future will be better. And build that future through art, sport and the empowerment of women,” she said.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. and Brazilian officials held trade talks on Thursday that the two sides called positive and agreed to work to schedule a meeting between President Donald Trump and his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “at the earliest possible occasion”.
In a joint statement, the delegations said they would “conduct discussions on multiple fronts in the immediate future and establish a working path forward,” though no timeline was given for the proposed Trump-Lula meeting.
The talks in Washington, which included U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, marks the latest diplomatic contact between the two countries in recent weeks after months of a frozen relationship.
“This is an auspicious start to a negotiation process in which we will work to normalize and open new paths for bilateral relations,” Vieira told journalists in Washington.
Trump increased tariffs on U.S. imports of most Brazilian goods to 50% from 10% in early August, linking the move to what he called a “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro ended up being convicted in September by a Supreme Court panel to more than 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after he lost the 2022 election to Lula.
Last week, Trump and Lula held a phone call, following a brief encounter at the United Nations in September, after which both said they came away with positive impressions.
During the call, they agreed to meet in person, raising hopes for a thaw in bilateral relations that are at their lowest point in decades.
Thursday’s talks were “great”, with a productive tone and focused on technical issues, Vieira said. The meeting lasted about an hour and included a 20-minute one-on-one session with Rubio, he added.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Ismail Shakil in Washington, Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and Andre Romani in Sao Paulo; editing by Costas Pitas and Natalia Siniawski)
