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Signs of something ‘buried’ in Amazon disappearance of journalist, expert

AFP

Authorities combing a remote corner of the Amazon for signs of a missing British journalist and Brazilian indigenous expert are investigating a patch of earth where something appears to have been buried, officials said Friday.

Fears have been mounting over the fate of Dom Phillips, 57, a veteran contributor to The Guardian newspaper, and Bruno Pereira, 41, a respected specialist in indigenous peoples, since they disappeared Sunday after receiving threats during a research trip to Brazil’s Javari Valley, a far-flung jungle region that has seen a surge of illegal fishing, logging, mining and drug trafficking.

Authorities, who have arrested a suspect witnesses say pursued the men upriver and found blood on a tarp in his boat, told journalists accompanying the search operation they had a new lead in the case: a suspicious site with “overturned earth” near the area where the men were last seen, said emergency official Geonivan Maciel.

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“It’s as if someone had dug something at the site, buried something there,” Maciel said.

“We’re going to carry out a scan of the bottom to verify… We can’t say there’s definite evidence, but we’re going to see if there’s something there that could identify something about the two missing men.”

President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has faced criticism of failing to scale up the search operation fast enough, and mounting pressure from high-profile media organizations, rights groups and celebrities including football legend Pele and iconic singer Caetano Veloso.

Bolsonaro appeared to blame the men, saying they had gone on an “unadvisable adventure.”

Police have said they are hopeful of finding the pair alive but are not ruling out any possibility, including homicide.

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Witnesses say they saw the arrested man trailing Phillips and Pereira’s boat as the pair made their way back to the small city of Atalaia do Norte after a research trip to an area known as Jaburu lake.

Local indigenous activists say Phillips and Pereira received threats last week while working in the region.

Pereira, a highly regarded expert on the region currently on leave from Brazilian indigenous affairs agency FUNAI, has been a target of death threats for his work fighting illegal invasions of indigenous lands.

Phillips was accompanying him for a book project on sustainable development in the Amazon.

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International

Trump promises the largest deportation of migrants in history, “they are going to destroy the country”

The former president of the United States and Republican pre-candidate Donald Trump promised to carry out the “highest deportation” of migrants in the country’s history if he returns to the White House after the elections on November 5, because “they are going to destroy the country.”

“Allowing the entry through the southern border of millions and millions of people, many of them very bad, is not sustainable. They are going to destroy the country. We are going to do the biggest deportation in history. We have no other choice,” he said at a campaign rally in Waukesha, in the key state of Wisconsin.

The former president once again accused his rival, Democratic President Joe Biden, of having applied an open border policy during the last four years that has resulted in an “invasion” of migrants.

Trump made these statements a day after an interview with Time magazine was published in which he detailed that he plans to deploy the Army to persecute and detain undocumented migrants if he wins the elections.

In the same interview, he did not rule out the possibility of building new migrant detention camps. Although he did not point it out as a priority since his plan is to deport them quickly.

Trump, who won the elections in 2016 after promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico, has put migration back at the center of his campaign, which has become one of the issues of greatest concern for voters.

The Republican took advantage of a pause in the open criminal trial he has in New York to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan. Places where he is practically tied with Biden in the polls.

The New York tycoon already visited these two states in the midwest of the country in April and then also insisted on the issue of migration, since he accused the current president of having caused a “bloodbath at the border.”

The Biden Administration annulled Trump’s policy that facilitated the return of hot migrants. It launched humanitarian permit programs for people from several countries, while restricting asylum applications at the border.

More than two million people were arrested last year when crossing the southern border of the United States irregularly.

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International

‘Gaby’ Carrizo, the unpopular ruling presidential candidate for the Presidency of Panama

José Gabriel Carrizo, the current Panamanian vice president, better known as ‘Gaby’, aspires to the historic Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) to lead Panama again for another five years after next Sunday’s elections, in which he participates with low popularity rates.

Carrizo, the ruling party’s candidate for the Presidency in conjunction with the Molinera party, and who this Wednesday closes his campaign in Panama City, is at the queue of the polls among the five candidates with options, although the strong base of the PRD in the country, the party of the iconic general Omar Torrijos, cannot be underestimated.

The polls that ‘Gaby’ does lead are those of rejection, with between 50% and 60% of the participants in some surveys who assured that they would “never” vote for him.

“Don’t eat a story (…) we are going to win the elections in a forceful way,” Carrizo said on Wednesday at the closing ceremony of the campaign before a mass of members of the PRD, and assured that the polls “really that they do not want to publish” predict that triumph.

A lawyer by profession, he has been a member of the majority party of Panama since 2007 and in 2019 he became the youngest vice president in Panamanian history at just 36 years old, after Laurentino Cortizo won that year’s elections.

‘Gaby’, 40, has had a lot of visibility within the Executive, which has led to it being popularly pointed out as one of the main faces behind the different scandals that have enveloped the current Government since its inception and that increased with the COVID-19 pandemic.

That year, Carrizo defended the transparent management of the $1,457 million approved during 2020 to combat the pandemic in Panama.

Carrizo has also had a step run over by the presidential debates or during interviews with some media, when making mistakes when explaining his proposals, defending for example that “Panama is safer than France” or that they want to “pass Panama from the first world to the third world.”

This triggered a wave of jokes on social networks that the same candidate used in his favor to campaign with humor, a tone of his political strategy.

In the third and final debate he made the decision not to participate, arguing that José Raúl Mulino, candidate who leads the polls for the Realizing Goals party and substitute for the disabled former President Ricardo Martinelli (2009 – 2014), did not join the debate, as he had not done in the previous ones.

“In the case of the vice president candidate, I think he was looking for an excuse not to come because the last interventions have really been disastrous for him,” José Blandón, the running mate for vice president of Rómulo Roux of Democratic Change, told EFE after the debate.

The youngest of the eight candidates for the Presidency, starts with his main proposal to reduce the working week by maintaining 40 hours in fewer days, a system similar to the one already implemented in some European countries: “Work four days, pound three,” he says on his advertising posters and social networks.

Carrizo has given continuous mass baths in the provinces of Panama during his campaign explaining his electoral promises, which include that cut in working days, salary increases – including for security groups -, free medicines and promotion of tourism, among others.

“When you ask how much 4×8 is (referring to the ruling you had in one of the debates by saying 40 and not 32) answer that there are a thousand sticks (tickets) for your pocket,” the candidate shouts eagerly in one of his videos.

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International

Trump defends that each state can legislate on abortion after the restriction in Florida

The former president of the United States and Republican pre-candidate, Donald Trump, defended that each state in the country is free to legislate on abortion, after the law prohibiting pregnancy interruptions from six weeks in Florida came into force.

The New York tycoon gave a campaign rally in Freeland, in the key state of Michigan, where he publicly congratulated the Supreme Court judges who overthrewn federal abortion protection in 2022 and opened the door for conservative states to restrict that practice.

“Now the states can decide; that’s what everyone wanted for 50 years and we achieved it,” said the Republican, who during his term nominated three of the nine judges of the High Court.

Trump admitted that there will be disgruntled people because in some states there will be “more progressive laws” than the conservatives would like, but he insisted that this is the best option.

In addition, he reminded his acolytes that you have to “win the elections” because, otherwise, abortion would be in the hands of the federal government again.

Florida, governed by the Republicans, released a new law that prohibits abortion from six weeks of gestation. Even when many women still don’t know that they are pregnant.

The vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, campaigned in the state. He blamed Trump for that law and assured that the Republican intends to ban abortion throughout the country if he returns to the White House.

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