An Air France passenger jet headed from Rio to Paris made an emergency landing in northeastern Brazil due to a bomb threat.
All 405 passengers and 18 crew members were safely evacuated from Air France Flight 443 on Saturday night, said Jorge Andrade, a spokesman for airport authority Infraero.
A spokesman for Air France in Brazil said the bomb threat was phoned in to Rio’s international airport by a female voice about 30 minutes after the plane took off.
The control tower contacted the jet and the decision was made to land in Recife, the Air France spokesman said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. (more…)
Brazil’s federal and Paraiba state governments have signed a service order to begin a 39.6mn-real (US$22.3mn) dredging project for the state’s Cabedelo port.
The port’s depth will increase to 11m from 9m, doubling operational capacity and allowing cargo capacity per ship to jump to 60Mt from 30Mt, the state government reported in a release.
Besides dredging, the project also includes expansion work and the installation of new cranes. (more…)
At least 50 people have died and 56 are still missing following the torrential rains and floods that have affected several parts of northeastern Brazil, the nation’s poorest region, officials said.
According to the latest figures provided by emergency-management officials, the discovery of four more bodies in the state of Alagoas, one of the areas hardest hit by the flooding, brought the number of fatalities to 33.
According to that account, the number of people missing in the state, originally reported as 607, has been reduced sharply and now stands at 56.
The decrease came about because numerous residents of rural communities located in hard-to-reach areas have been found, while people who had taken refuge in remote areas to protect themselves from the rains have gradually returned home. (more…)
The IAPA (Inter American Press Association) called on Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to support a Brazilian senate proposal for a constitutional amendment that would automatically make crimes against journalists and against press freedom federal offenses.
The initiative by Paraíba state senator Roberto Cavalcanti of the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB) is based on proposals and conclusions discussed at the forum “Shortcomings and Gaps in Justice: How to Prevent Impunity in Crimes Against the Press” that the IAPA held in mid-May in Rio de Janeiro together with the Brazilian Association of Investigative Reporting (ABRAJI) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
Brazilian beekeepers from Piauí state, in the Brazilian Northeast, have a lot to celebrate. The Central of Beekeeping Cooperatives of the Brazilian Semiarid (Casa Apis), based in Picos, in the south of the state, earned a Fair Trade Certificate January 28.
“Casa Apis had been going through the certification process for some time and now we received this piece of good news,” says the president of the Federation of Beekeeping Organizations of Piauí and director of Casa Apis, Antonio Leopoldino Dantas. (more…)
