A Brazilian judge on Thursday overturned a lower court ruling that suspended work on a massive hydroelectric dam in the Amazon jungle state of Para.
Federal judge Ronaldo Desterro ruled last week that Brazil’s environmental agency had erred when it approved work to begin on the Belo Monte dam.
He said 29 environmental conditions had not been met, such as the recovery of degraded areas and measures to guarantee the navigability of rivers.
On Thursday, Judge Olindo Menezes of a higher federal court overturned the suspension, saying in a statement there was no need for all the conditions to be met before construction begins.
The US$11 billion, 11,000-megawatt dam, to be constructed on the Xingu River feeding the Amazon, would be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric energy producer behind China’s Three Gorges dam and the Itaipu, straddling the border of Brazil and Paraguay.
The government says the dam will provide clean, renewable energy and is essential to fuel the South American country’s growing economy.
Officials say they spent years planning to protect the environment and local residents before the dam was approved. Environmentalists and indigenous groups say it would devastate wildlife and the livelihoods of 40,000 people who live in the area to be flooded.
Celebrities including British rock star Sting, film director James Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver have joined activists in lobbying against the dam. When Cameron participated in protests against the project in Brazil last year, he compared the anti-dam struggle by indigenous people to the plot of his film Avatar, which depicts natives of a planet fighting to protect their homeland from plans to extract its resources.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
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