The air marshals were arrested in Brazil after they arrested the wife of a Brazilian judge aboard a Continental flight.
Two U.S. air marshals who arrested the wife of a Brazilian judge on a flight to Rio de Janeiro — and were themselves arrested and had their passports confiscated by Brazilian authorities — fled the country using alternate travel documents rather than face what they believed to be trumped-up charges, sources said.
The incident has impacted air marshal operations on flights to Brazil, officials said, and air marshals contacted by CNN said the case raises questions about Brazil’s willingness to support future law enforcement actions by U.S. officials on international flights.
The incident occurred on October 1 on Continental Flight 128 from Houston, Texas, to Rio de Janeiro. During the flight, a female passenger who appeared to be intoxicated tried to serve herself drinks by going to the plane’s galley, one source said. The plane’s crew asked air marshals to intervene, and two marshals approached the woman, who began struggling with them.
Two sources said the woman bit one of the air marshals, and she was handcuffed and placed under arrest.
At the Rio airport, the air marshals went to turn over the woman to local authorities but were themselves brought before a federal judge and charged with misdemeanor counts of assault, sources said. Brazilian authorities took the air marshals’ passports, so they could not leave the country and set a court hearing for the following week, sources said.
“They (Brazilian officials) did not want them to leave. They were not free to go,” one U.S. law enforcement source said.
But the air marshals used alternate travel documents and quietly departed the country on a commercial flight that same day without the knowledge of the Brazilian court officials who had sought their detention.
One source said the air marshals believed the charges against them were retaliatory because the passenger they arrested is the wife of a prominent Brazilian judge. The air marshals believed it was to their benefit to leave the country and let the U.S. and Brazilian governments resolve the dispute, the source said.
The air marshals had not recovered their passports when they left, the sources said. (more…)
about Brazil, Paraíba and João Pessoa
Confiscated logs are taken across the Amazon rain forest to a port on the outskirts of Tailandia, Feb. 27, 2008. (Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images)
Brazil’s rain forest gamble: A model for sustainable development or a path to deforestation?
Chainsaws roared in the deep northern Amazon, chewing into the massive red trunk of a tropical hardwood called roxinho. The tree fell with little fanfare but the moment marked the beginning of an unprecedented logging experiment.
The Brazilian government has begun granting private companies permission to manage a vast swath of the Brazilian Amazon. The first tree was cut last month and by the end of the year, the part of the Amazon available for logging is slated to swell to more than six times its current size.
And in the next five years, Brazil plans to sell logging rights to more than 27 million acres of jungle, the country’s top forest official said last week. Critics call it a dangerous gamble but Brazil’s government says managed logging is an essential alternative to the illegal clear-cutting that has besieged the world’s largest rainforest.
“Everything in this country is an incentive for deforestation,” said Antonio Carlos Hummel, head of Brazil’s forest service, at a summit hosted last week by the Reuters news agency. “So we’re having to change the paradigm: finance standing forests.”
The new paradigm, Hummel added, will involve selling logging concessions on 2.5 million more acres of forest by the end of this year and 27.5 million acres by 2015. The move would mean expanding the current 370,000 acres of legal logging concessions — an area about half the size of Rhode Island — to include a swath of forest bigger than Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont put together.
The plan is simple in theory: Brazilian companies bid for 40-year leases on patches of forest. They submit plans for sustainable logging, employ locals, invest some of their profits in the region and leave the forest healthy when they’re done. Supporters say the system will be a model for sustainable development that improves upon the failed strategy of simply trying to keep loggers out.
“We need to offer alternatives that increase the value of the forest and that turn the forest into a source of benefits, especially of social benefits,” said Marcus Vinicius Alves, a director at the forest service. “It’s not going to be possible to get these types of social gains simply by surrounding the forest with the armed forces.” (more…)
about Brazil, Paraíba and João Pessoa
A man who escaped prison in Brazil has been re-arrested after a dramatic police car chase in Sao Paulo.
When the prisoner’s car was stopped by police for a minor traffic violation, he sped off in an attempt to avoid arrest.
He reportedly struck at least nine cars and four motorcycles as he tried to get away.
At least three people were injured during the chase, including the driver.
Police fired shots at the car, as drivers abandoned their vehicles.
about Brazil, Paraíba and João Pessoa
Edeilson Manoel do Nascimento holds an X-ray showing a knife that was inside his head. (AP Photo/Helia Scheppa, JC Imagem)
Brazil doctors remove knife blade stuck in man’s head for 3 years
A man in northeastern Brazil is recovering after surgeons removed a 4-inch (10-centimeter) blade that had been stuck in his head for three years following a bar fight. Edeilson Nascimento, a 29-year-old tire repairman, tells reporters Friday he is feeling great after the three-hour surgery earlier this week.
He is expected to be released from a hospital in the city of Recife next week.
Nascimento says he got into a bar fight in 2007 and was attacked by assailants when he returned home.
At the time, doctors only removed the knife handle, fearing that pulling the blade from his head would cause brain damage.
But three years of intense headaches led Nascimento to take a chance on the surgery.
about Brazil, Paraíba and João Pessoa
Police in Brazil say they have caught an Italian man who managed to amass $US259,000 ($A273,784.36) in traffic fines and other penalties linked to his van.
Police say they arrested 62-year-old engineer Roberto Cintio at his office after a 10-day investigation.
Most of Cintio’s fines were for speeding, which are levied in Brazilian cities by radar cameras without a police stop of the vehicle. Other fines were for parking, not paying vehicle property taxes and other infractions.
A police statement issued on Tuesday says Cintio likely evaded police by using false IDs. It says several blank identification cards were found with him.
There was no indication how long it took Cintio to build up the fines on his 9-year-old General Motors van.
about Brazil, Paraíba and João Pessoa
