Brazil's Senate decided not to expel the body's president, absolving a key ally of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of charges he took bribes for helping steer government contracts to a construction company.
Senators voted 40-35 with six abstentions on Wednesday against ousting Renan Calheiros, who was accused of accepting US$8,000 a month from the company. Calheiros denied the charges and had refused to resign.
Calheiros had successfully fought for a secret ballot -- keeping the vote on his fate out of view of a public already weary and suspicious of politicians after a series of corruption scandals that have already toppled several Silva allies.
The Senate vote came six weeks after the Supreme Court indicted 40 people on charges of paying or taking bribes, including Silva's former chief of staff and congressmen from allied parties.
Calheiros left the Senate in the capital of Brasilia without speaking to reporters but later released a statement calling the decision a "victory for democracy."
In the statement, issued through the government news agency Agencia Brasil, Calheiros said he would now work on advancing a legislative agenda that has been stalled since the scandal broke in May -- including a vote on a tax the government considers essential to fund its budget next year.
Analysts were mixed on whether Wednesday's Senate vote would hurt or help Silva, Brazil's first elected leftist president.
"Acquittal was better than conviction, because everyone knows Renan has helped the government a lot and nobody was sure about his successor," said Octaviano Nogueira, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.
But David Fleischer, a political analyst also at the University of Brasilia, said Silva's opponents could use the vote against him.
"I don't think the decision was good for the government because [opposition parties] will blame the government for working behind the scenes to save Renan and will stall procedures in the Senate." Fleischer said.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS