International
Brazil seeks arrest of Bolsonaro ally over Brasilia riots
January 11 | By AFP | Florian Plaucheur with Louis Genot in Rio de Janeiro |
Brazilian authorities seeking to punish the mob that stormed the halls of power in Brasilia issued arrest warrants Tuesday for two former senior officials, one of them a close ally of far right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.
One of them is Anderson Torres, who used to be Bolsonaro’s justice minister and lately served as security chief in the capital.
He was fired after Sunday’s stunning violence, which was reminiscent of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, and brought global condemnation.
Anderson’s failure to act as thousands of Bolsonaro supporters overran congress, the presidential palace and the supreme court is “potentially criminal,” judge Alexandre Moraes of the Supreme Court said.
He also issued an arrest warrant for Fabio Augusto, who led the military police in Brasilia and was also removed from his job after Sunday’s mob violence. News reports said he is already in custody.
“Brazilian democracy will not be struck, much less destroyed, by terrorist criminals,” the judge wrote in his decision.
Torres was on vacation in the United States on Sunday as the mob ran amok. On Tuesday he denied any complicity in the events and said he will return to Brazil and defend himself.
Bolsonaro has also been in the United States since the end of December, skipping the inauguration of successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro left the Florida hospital where he had been receiving treatment for intestinal problems stemming from a stabbing in 2018.
Most detainees released
The security forces in Brasilia have come under stinging attack over how they responded initially to the riot. Video posted on social media showed some of them filming the violence rather than intervening to halt it.
Justice Minister Flavio Dino said around 50 arrest warrants had been issued for people not caught in the act of pillaging and for others not present but accused of organizing the attack.
Police have arrested more than 1,500 people so far but said on Tuesday that “599 people were released, mostly old people, people with health problems, the homeless and mothers with children” on humanitarian grounds.
Most of the arrests took place on Monday as police cleared protest camps set up in the capital.
Lula had condemned “terrorist acts and criminal, coup-mongering vandalism” when he returned to work at the pillaged presidential palace on Monday.
But on Tuesday he said “Brazilian democracy remains firm,” in a post on Twitter.
“Let’s recover the country from hatred and disunity,” added the 77-year-old former trade unionist, who took office on January 1 for his third term as president after defeating Bolsonaro in the deeply divisive election.
Police said 527 people remain detained while others were being processed.
Those that were released were taken on buses to a bus station from where they would be able to return to their home regions.
From one of the buses, passengers shouted: “Victory is ours!” Some people put their arms outside the vehicles with clenched fists — a symbol of resistance — or making the “V” victory sign.
Other detainees were taken to police stations to then be transferred to the Papuda prison complex, an AFP reporter said.
‘Humiliation’
“Now we’re going to rest and prepare ourselves for another battle because if they think they will intimidate us, they are very wrong,” Agostinho Ribeiro, a freed Bolsonaro supporter, told AFP.
He said the detainees’ treatment at a police gymnasium where they were held had been humiliating and compared it to a Nazi concentration camp, while blaming the rioting on left-wing “infiltrators.”
Hundreds of soldiers and police mobilized to dismantle an improvised camp outside the army’s headquarters in Brasilia on Monday.
There, some 3,000 Bolsonaro supporters had set up tents — used as a base for the sea of protesters who ran riot for around four hours on Sunday.
Bolsonaro has alleged his electoral defeat was due to a conspiracy against him by Brazil’s courts and electoral authorities.
Lula, who previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, met with the leaders of both houses of Congress and the chief justice of the Supreme Court on Monday.
International
French Parliament Moves to Approve Social Media Age Limit for Minors
France’s Parliament is expected to approve legislation on Tuesday banning children under the age of 15 from accessing social media platforms, following an agreement reached Monday between lawmakers on the mechanism to enforce the measure.
The initiative is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s broader effort to strengthen online protections for minors and regulate children’s screen time before the end of his second presidential term in May 2027.
“Tomorrow, France will become the first country in Europe to establish a digital age of majority to better protect our children online,” Digital Affairs Minister Anne Le Hénanff said Monday in a post on X.
If approved, the government plans to implement the restriction in September, when students return to school after the summer holidays.
The United Kingdom has already passed similar legislation restricting social media access for users under the age of 16, although that measure is scheduled to take effect in early 2027.
Both the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, and the Senate are expected to hold final votes on the legislation Tuesday after a joint committee of seven senators and seven lawmakers reached an agreement on the bill’s final wording.
Under the proposed law, children under 15 years old would be prohibited from accessing online social media services, with limited exceptions for certain platforms, including online encyclopedias.
The legislation would make France the first member of the European Union to introduce a nationwide minimum digital age for access to social media platforms, reflecting a growing international movement to strengthen online safeguards for children and teenagers.
International
WHO to Hold New Round of Talks After Slow Progress on Pandemic Accord
Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) made limited progress during the seventh session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) tasked with finalizing a key annex to the global pandemic agreement, prompting negotiators to schedule another round of talks in September.
The session, which opened on July 6 and concluded last week at WHO headquarters in Geneva, focused on drafting and negotiating the annex covering the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System, a central component of the pandemic accord.
Without the completion of the PABS annex, the global pandemic agreement cannot enter into force.
The annex had originally been expected to be finalized before May 2026, but negotiations have progressed more slowly than anticipated.
In a statement, the WHO said member states “advanced negotiations” on the PABS system while acknowledging that additional discussions are required to complete a framework capable of supporting a faster, more effective and more equitable response to future pandemics.
The organization announced that an eighth round of negotiations will take place on September 14.
Despite the limited progress, delegates succeeded in streamlining the draft text and concentrating discussions on several technical issues.
According to the WHO, negotiators focused on the contractual arrangements underpinning the PABS mechanism, the laboratory networks responsible for handling and sharing pathogens and their genetic sequence data, as well as the framework for distributing the benefits generated through the sharing of those pathogens.
The PABS system is considered one of the most important elements of the future pandemic agreement, as it aims to ensure timely access to pathogens for scientific research while establishing fair mechanisms for sharing the benefits derived from vaccines, diagnostics and other medical countermeasures developed during future global health emergencies.
International
Iran Says It Is in “Full-Scale War” as U.S. Launches Ninth Consecutive Night of Airstrikes
Iran declared on Monday that it is facing a “full-scale war” against the United States after Washington carried out another wave of overnight airstrikes, including attacks near a city that hosts one of the country’s nuclear facilities.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country must prepare for the consequences of the ongoing conflict, describing the situation as a broad military confrontation.
“The reality is that today the Islamic Republic of Iran is engaged in a full-scale war,” Pezeshkian said in a statement released by the presidency. “We must be realistic and accept the natural consequences of this resistance.”
The latest U.S. strikes marked the ninth consecutive night of military operations, according to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which announced the attacks on X.
Since hostilities resumed on July 7, U.S. air operations have expanded well beyond southern Iran, reaching central and northwestern regions of the country, according to local sources.
Local authorities reported that one person was killed and several others injured in Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Persian Gulf.
Additional casualties were reported in the nearby city of Urmia, where several people were wounded during separate strikes.
Washington said the attacks targeted military installations. However, Iranian officials accused the United States of striking populated areas, including Bushehr, home to Iran’s only operational nuclear power plant.
Iran also reported that the Darkhovin nuclear facility, which is still under construction, was among the sites hit during the latest attacks.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the renewed military campaign was carried out in honor of American service members killed in recent days.
Two U.S. soldiers died on Friday during attacks on a military base in Jordan, while another service member was killed on Sunday during the controlled disposal of unexploded munitions from an Iranian drone in northern Iraq.
According to U.S. figures, 17 American troops have been killed since the conflict began on February 28.
On the Iranian side, the latest official figures released on Friday reported 50 deaths and more than 500 injuries since fighting resumed earlier this month.
A memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States on June 17, which had been intended to pave the way for peace negotiations, collapsed after hostilities resumed over the strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy shipping routes.
French Parliament Moves to Approve Social Media Age Limit for Minors
WHO to Hold New Round of Talks After Slow Progress on Pandemic Accord
Iran Says It Is in “Full-Scale War” as U.S. Launches Ninth Consecutive Night of Airstrikes
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