Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets against President Jair Bolsonaro's coronavirus policies on Saturday after the Supreme Court allowed investigations to be opened into Bolsonaro over corruption allegations related to vaccine orders.
In more than 110 cities in Brazil, demonstrators also called for an accelerated vaccine campaign, the Brazilian news portal G1 reported.
The protests were originally planned for July 24, but organizers called for them to take place earlier in light of the allegations.
Judge Rosa Weber granted a request by the Attorney General's Office to look into corruption allegations against Bolsonaro linked to the order of 20 million doses of the Indian Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin, the news agency Agencia Brasil reported on Friday evening.
A group of senators had filed criminal charges against Bolsonaro on suspicion of abuse of office for ignoring a suspicion of corruption.
A former Health Ministry employee had reported "unusual pressure" in the handling of the vaccine deal, worth more than 300 million dollars in total. The price of 15 dollars is also said to be the highest that the Health Ministry has been willing to pay for a dose so far.
The Health Ministry is said to have ordered the vaccine, which was developed and manufactured in India, before it was even approved in Brazil.
A lawmaker, the brother of the former Health Ministry official, testified to having informed Bolsonaro about these inconsistencies.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian government, which suspended the contract to buy the Covaxin vaccine doses this week, gave several versions of the case. Bolsonaro said he had no knowledge of irregularities.
According to senators close to the government, on the other hand, Bolsonaro allegedly informed the health minister at the time, Eduardo Pazuello, about the allegations.
The Indian company Bharat Biotech said that the price of a dose of Covaxin for foreign governments was between 15 and 20 dollars, and the price for Brazil was within this range.
The Covaxin deal has also recently been the focus of a parliamentary investigative committee looking into the actions and omissions of Bolsonaro in the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the opening of impeachment proceedings against him depends on the president of the Chamber of Deputies - who is considered an ally of Bolsonaro's government.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A Vatican judge on Saturday ordered 10 people, including an Italian cardinal, to stand trial for alleged financial crimes including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse of office.
Those indicted include Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was fired by Pope Francis last year, the former heads of the Vatican's financial intelligence unit, and two Italian brokers involved in the Vatican's purchase of a building in a luxury area of London.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella, editing by Gavin Jones)
By Tom Balmforth
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian warplanes practiced bombing enemy ships in the Black Sea during training exercises, Russia said on Saturday, amid friction with the West over NATO drills in the region and following a recent incident with a British warship.
Moscow last week challenged the right of HMS Defender to pass through waters near Crimea, something London said it had every right to do. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 but most of the world still recognises it as part of Ukraine.
Russia said the vessel had illegally entered its territorial waters and accused London of a "provocation". Moscow has said it could bomb British naval vessels if there are more such actions by the British navy off Crimea.
On Saturday, Russia's Black Sea Fleet said warplanes from its aviation units and those of the southern military district had taken part in training drills.
"Aircraft crews ... conducted training flights over the Black Sea, practicing missile and bombing strikes against simulated enemy ships," it was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.
The drills involved aircraft including Sukhoi Su-30SM multi-purpose fighters, Sukhoi Su-24M bombers, Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers and Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jets, the report said.
The exercise comes as NATO, Ukraine and allies conduct their large-scale Sea Breeze drills in the region.
Those drills are set to last two weeks and involve about 5,000 military personnel from NATO and other allies, and around 30 ships and 40 aircraft, with U.S. missile destroyer USS Ross and the U.S. Marine Corps taking part.
Moscow had called for the exercise to be cancelled and the Russian defence ministry has said it will react to safeguard national security if necessary.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by David Holmes)
Thousands of people demonstrated against the Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on Saturday, following the death of a prominent critic of the authority.
"Go Abbas!" posters at the demonstration in Ramallah read. Witnesses reported that critic Nisar Banat's family also took part in the rally.
Meanwhile, thousands of people also took part in a pro-Abbas rally in Hebron.
Banat died over a week ago near Hebron in the course of a police arrest. The exact reasons for the death have not yet been clarified.
According to the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, an autopsy revealed that he had suffered massive blows, including to the head and neck. Relatives accuse the police of severely mistreating the man during his arrest.
Security forces said they had a warrant for Banat's arrest for allegedly violating a Palestinian law against cybercrimes. Among other things, this restricts freedom of expression on social media.
A week ago, thousands of people took part in the critic's funeral, followed by days of protests calling for an end to Abbas' rule.
According to Palestinian sources, the protests were mainly attended by members of the Islamist Hisb al-Tahrir (Liberation Party).
Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Tropical Storm Elsa churned late Saturday off the southwestern coast of Haiti, headed toward Jamaica and eastern Cuba as forecasters warned of heavy rains, flash flooding and mudslides.
The weather system brought maximum sustained winds of 65 miles (100 kilometers) per hour and was moving northwest at 17 miles per hour, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
"There are fairly intense gusts of wind and light rain, but so far we have not recorded any damage," said Jerry Chandler, director of the Haitian Civil Protection Agency.
Elsa was the Atlantic's first hurricane of the season on Friday, when it was a Category 1 storm, until being downgraded on Saturday afternoon.
The storm was not expected to change in strength overnight, with "some slight strengthening possible Sunday afternoon as Elsa approaches the south-central coast of Cuba," the NHC said in its 11 pm (0300 GMT Sunday) update.
Forecasters had warned of rainfall of 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) across portions of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica, with isolated areas receiving 15 inches.
"This rain may lead to scattered flash flooding and mudslides, some of which may be significant in nature," the NHC said.
Cuba is Elsa's next target, with hurricane conditions expected on the eastern part of the island Sunday, while the southern coast could see a storm surge of 3 to 5 feet.
From Sunday into Monday, parts of Cuba could get 5 to 10 inches of rain, with isolated incidents of 15 inches resulting in "significant flash flooding and mudslides," the NHC said.
In Haiti, authorities raised the alert level to the maximum red on Saturday morning, warning the entire country to remain vigilant.
Officials in the impoverished nation have voiced fears that they lack emergency supplies such as food and water.
The government recently used a good part of its emergency resources in another crisis: the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes in Port-au-Prince because of raging gang violence.
Many of the displaced are staying in gyms, schools, or other public buildings, and some supplies originally earmarked for hurricane season have been diverted to support them, Chandler said.
Authorities want to ship emergency supplies to the southern coast, but heavily armed gangs control part of the only road leading from the capital to the south and are allowing nothing through.
To reach these threatened areas, Chandler said, "we have to go through red zones," referring to gang-held territory.
In 2016, Category 4 Hurricane Matthew killed more than 500 people in southern Haiti and caused nearly $2 billion in damage.
In the United States, parts of the Florida Keys were placed under a tropical storm watch on Saturday evening with forecasters expecting rain, storm surges, and strong winds from Elsa to affect the area and the Florida peninsula early next week.
Hurricane-related weather would be bad news for the Florida town of Surfside, near Miami, where rescuers are trying to dig out a collapsed condo building in search of survivors and bodies.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters Saturday that the part of the building still standing could be demolished before Elsa's arrival to protect the safety of the hundreds of search and rescue workers at the site.
The work could be completed within 36 hours, entailing "minimal work stoppage from the search and rescue teams," he said.
Meanwhile, the state expects to have 2.6 million drivers on the roads during the July 4 holiday weekend, according to South Florida's Sun-Sentinel newspaper, citing the AAA auto club.
"It isn't unreasonable for South Floridians to be ready for the potential of a Category 1 hurricane knocking on our door early next week," said Robert Garcia, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center, according to the paper.
"It is something that can't be ruled out, and folks should be aware that's something we may have to prepare for here during the holiday weekend."
Hurricane Elsa churned through the Caribbean early Saturday, bringing powerful winds and threatening to pile further misery on violence-wracked Haiti.
The Category 1 storm weakened slightly overnight and was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour.
At 5:00am (0900 GMT), it was just south of Hispaniola -- which is made up of Haiti and the Dominican Republic -- and moving northwest at 31 mph, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
"On the forecast track, Elsa will move near the southern coast of Hispaniola later today and tonight, and move near Jamaica and portions of eastern Cuba on Sunday," the NHC said.
"By Monday, Elsa is expected to move across central and western Cuba and head toward the Florida Straits."
It said Elsa could bring a tidal surge of as much as five feet (1.5 meters) above normal on Cuba's southern coast; up to four feet on the southern coast of Hispaniola; and up to three feet on the coast of Jamaica.
Rainfall, storm surges and strong winds from Elsa could affect the Florida Keys and parts of the Florida peninsula early next week, but this depends on how the storm behaves this weekend when it hits large Caribbean islands, the NHC said.
Hurricane-related weather would be bad news for the Florida town of Surfside, near Miami, where rescuers are trying to dig out a collapsed condo building in search of survivors and bodies.
In Haiti on Friday, authorities expressed worry that they lack emergency supplies such as food and water.
A good part of the emergency resources the government did have were used in another crisis: the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes in Port-au-Prince because of raging gang violence.
Many of these people are staying in gyms, schools or other public buildings, and some of the supplies that had been earmarked for the hurricane season have been used on these evacuees, said Jerry Chandler, director of the Haitian civil protection agency.
As the hurricane approached, authorities declared a weather alert Friday.
Authorities want to ship emergency supplies to the southern coast, which is most threatened. But heavily armed gangs control part of the only road leading from the capital to the south, and they do not let everything through.
To reach these threatened areas, Chandler said, "we have to go through red zones," referring to gang-held territory.
In 2016, Hurricane Matthew killed more than 500 people in southern Haiti and caused nearly $2 billion in damage.
Journalist Nathan Maung turned to meditation when he was jailed for reporting on Myanmar's bloody coup, but even back home in sleepy Virginia, he can't forget those left behind, including a colleague still at the mercy of their jailers.
In March, as the junta moved to crush mass pro-democracy protests on Myanmar's streets, about 45 soldiers arrived at Maung's office in the commercial capital Yangon, he told AFP in an interview.
As the squad battered their way through the gate and a locked door, Maung was frantically sending messages to friends telling them he was about to be arrested, he said.
When the soldiers finally broke through and stormed in with their guns up, "I said, 'Please, don't shoot us'."
Myanmar has been rocked by a huge uprising since the February putsch that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and her government.
The junta has responded with force -- shooting protesters, arresting suspected dissidents, rounding up journalists and shutting down news outlets.
Maung and his colleague Hanthar Nyein watched the squad take "everything from our office" -- cash, jewelry, and even shoes -- before they were brought to an interrogation center in northern Yangon.
There, he said, he was held "for four days" -- during three of which he was denied food, and for two, water.
"I kept practicing Vipassana meditation to be mindful," said Maung, who is a Myanmar-born US citizen.
And with the first sip of water came hope.
"After I drank my first water, I thought I could live," he said. "I wouldn't be killed."
More than 880 people have been killed and almost 6,500 arrested in the crackdown according to a local monitoring group, although the State Administration Council -- as the junta calls itself -- disputes these figures.
Another group, Reporting ASEAN, says 89 journalists have been detained since the coup.
In March, one journalist livestreamed his own arrest on his employer's official Facebook page, with the chaotic footage showing loud bangs outside his apartment building.
Kamayut Media, which Maung founded, faced similar charges under a colonial-era law that criminalizes encouraging dissent against the military.
As well as brute force, the military has re-tooled a colonial-era law to make spreading "fake news" a crime as it tightens its grip on dissent.
Maung soon found out how brutal the consequences of being brought in could be.
"They hit my eardrums with their bare hands several times, they beat my face and shoulders," he said.
"(They) kicked... my sides."
His phone had been broken by the time he got to the center, and was of no use to his interrogators looking for contacts of dissidents and other journalists.
But Hanthar Nyein's was still working, and they needed his password.
"They put his legs on the ice block for hours, burnt his skin with a cigarette," Maung said.
He refused to tell them until they threatened to rape him, Maung said, and when they found pictures of him with Suu Kyi and other political figures, he was beaten again.
The junta's information team says all investigations and interrogations are being carried out according to the law.
Maung believes US diplomacy was one of the factors in all charges against him being dropped, and his release in June.
It is a freedom not yet afforded to fellow US citizen and journalist Danny Fenster, who has been held since May 24, the only foreign reporter remaining in junta custody.
In Fredericksburg, Virginia, Maung said he is committed to continuing his work and a "free Burma" -- using a previous name for Myanmar -- and to work to free other imprisoned journalists, such as his colleague Hanthar.
Until then, he has demons to live with.
"I contacted our lawyers when I arrived in the States, and I was told that he was crying in the court when I left him behind," he said.
"It broke my heart... I do not enjoy my freedom at all."
The French government on Friday denied any cover-up over radiation levels in the Pacific following its nuclear testing in the region, as state-backed discussions took place in Paris about the legacy of the explosions.
A two-day meeting called by French President Emmanuel Macron began on Thursday following fresh allegations that the testing from 1966 to 1996 caused hidden atmospheric and ground radiation.
"There was no state cover-up," Genevieve Darrieusseq, junior defense minister, told AFP in a brief comment on the sidelines of the event, where she has ruled out any official apology from France.
In March, the investigative website Disclose created waves when it said it had analyzed some 2,000 pages of declassified French military documents about the nearly 200 tests carried out around French Polynesia.
Working with statistical experts and academics from Princeton University in the US, it concluded that "French authorities have concealed the true impact of nuclear testing on the health of Polynesians for more than 50 years."
The roundtable discussions have been attended by three French ministers, as well as Macron himself, who made no public comment after taking part on Thursday.
Edouard Fritch, the president of French Polynesia, a semi-autonomous French territory, said Macron had promised to open up the military archives about the tests, a key demand from historians, and would visit Tahiti on July 25.
Only records that could lead to nuclear proliferation are to remain secret.
"We felt that the president had a real desire to turn this painful page for all of us, with the resources that will need to be put in place in the future, so that Polynesians can rebuild the faith that we have always had in France," Fritch said Friday.
The event has met with criticism from some Polynesian politicians as well as anti-nuclear campaigners and historians, who say they have been blocked from properly investigating by state secrecy laws.
Moetai Brotherson, a supporter of independence who sits in the national parliament representing the archipelago, refused to attend unless France apologized for the tests.
His party, the Tavini Huiraatira, said it would organize a rival event in Tahiti on Friday.
Compensation
Over the last year, Macron has shown a willingness to tackle historically taboo issues for France, including its bloody colonial history in Algeria and its role in Rwanda in the lead up to the 1994 genocide.
The nuclear tests remain a source of deep resentment and anger in French Polynesia, where they are seen as evidence of colonial or even racist attitudes that disregarded the lives of islanders.
The US and Britain also carried out dozens of nuclear tests in the Pacific during the Cold War arms race.
Up until now only 63 French Polynesian civilians, excluding soldiers and contractors, have received compensation for exposure to radiation from the nuclear tests, according to Disclose.
The website said it had reassessed the pollution on the Gambier Islands, Tureia and Tahiti following the six nuclear tests considered to be the most contaminating in the history of French tests in the Pacific.
It claimed that its conclusions were starkly different to those of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), whose figures served as the reference for compensation for victims of the tests.
In one instance, Disclose said radioactive soil deposits on an atoll had been underestimated by more than 40 percent, while more than 100,000 people might have been contaminated in total.
Protests
France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades in French Polynesia until former president Jacques Chirac ended the program in the 1990s amid an international protest campaign.
In 2016, former president Francois Hollande acknowledged during a trip to the region that the tests had "an impact" on health and the environment and promised to revamp the compensation process.
From 1960 to 1966, France also carried out 17 nuclear tests at desert sites in Algeria, where campaigners continue to press for compensation and clean-ups.
(AFP)
In the wake of the latest failure by the G7 nations to take meaningful steps to combat the climate emergency and record-breaking heatwaves on multiple continents, Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg on Friday accused world leaders of hypocrisy for persecuting climate activists while "pretending" to take the threat seriously.
"Young people all over this planet are no longer falling for your lies."
—Greta Thunberg to world leaders
Addressing the Austrian World Summit virtually, the 18-year-old Thunberg noted that "more and more people around the world have woken up to the climate and ecological crisis, putting more and more pressure on you, the people in power."
"Eventually the public pressure was too much," said the Fridays for Future founder. "You have the world's eyes on you, so you started to act. Not acting as in taking climate action, but acting as in role-playing. Playing politics, playing with words, and playing with our future. Pretending to take responsibility; acting as saviors as you try to convince us that things are being taken seriously."
"Meanwhile the gap between your rhetoric and reality keeps growing wider and wider," Thunberg continued. "And since the level of awareness is so low you almost get away with it."
"But let's be clear," she stressed, "what you are doing is not about climate action or responding to an emergency. It never was. This is communications tactics dressed as politics."
Thunberg accused leaders of high-income nations of "pretending to change and listen to young people," and in a thinly veiled criticism of U.S. President Joe Biden, by "pretending to take science seriously by saying 'science is back' while holding climate summits without even inviting one single climate scientist as speaker."
She also accused leaders of "pretending to wage war against fossil fuels, while opening up brand-new coal mines, oil fields, and pipelines."
"You don't only continue business as usual," said Thunberg, "in many cases you're even speeding up and scaling up the process, pretending to have the most ambitious climate policies while granting new oil licenses [and] exploring future oil fields."
In another swipe at Biden, Thunberg decried "pretending to 'build back better' after the pandemic even though astronomical sums of money have already been locked in, and not in green projects."
"And when your empty words are not enough, when the protests grow too loud, you respond by making the protests illegal."
—Thunberg
"The G7, as an example, is spending billions more on fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure than on clean energy," she noted.
"And when your empty words are not enough, when the protests grow too loud, you respond by making the protests illegal," Thunberg charged. Her remarks came amid a wave of arrests of climate activists, including members of the youth-led Sunrise Movement in Washington, D.C. and Indigenous-led water protectors protesting the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota and elsewhere in recent days and weeks.
"But as your acts continue, more and more of us are seeing through... your role-playing," Thunberg said. "The gap between your actions and words is becoming more impossible to ignore, while more and more extreme weather events are raging all around us. And as a result, young people all over this planet are no longer falling for your lies."
"You say we need to move slowly to bring the public along," Thunberg continued. "However, how do you honestly expect to bring the people along if you don't treat this crisis like a crisis? The climate crisis is today at best being treated only as a business opportunity to create new green jobs, new green businesses and technologies."
"Perhaps playing a role helps you sleep at night," Thunberg speculated. "But while you are busy working the stage, you seem to forget that the climate crisis is not something distant in the future. It is already taking so much from the most affected people in the most affected areas."
"This might just be a game to you, a game to win votes, popularity, points on the stock market, or your next highly paid position in a company or a lobbying firm," she said. "You can and will continue to pretend, but nature and physics will not fall for it."
Ottawa prepared Friday to send military aircraft and other help to evacuate towns and fight more than 100 wildfires in western Canada fueled by a record-smashing heat wave.
According to wildfire officials, at least 143 fires were active in British Columbia, 77 of them sparked in the last two days. Most were caused by lightning strikes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would convene an incident response group later in the day to address the emergency needs of the province, adding that he already spoke with British Columbia's premier, as well as local mayors and indigenous chiefs in communities under threat.
"We will be there to help," he told a news conference.
That will include military helicopters and possibly Hercules turboprop transport planes, Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan earlier told public broadcaster CBC.
"Canadian Forces are ready to support residents," he said in a Twitter message.
Roughly 1,000 people have already fled the wildfires in British Columbia, and authorities are searching for many who have gone missing.
The village of Lytton, 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Vancouver, was evacuated Wednesday night because of a fire that flared up suddenly and spread quickly.
The fire came a day after the village set a Canadian record-high temperature on Tuesday of 49.6 degrees Celsius (121 degrees Fahrenheit).
Fatalities have been reported in Canada's westernmost province, but an official toll has yet to be released, as members of the British Columbia coroner service headed into hotspots on Friday to begin investigating.
"Today our thoughts are mostly with families that are grieving, that are facing terrible loss," said Trudeau.
#photo1"But of course, we also have to reflect on the fact that extreme weather events are getting more frequent and climate change has a significant role to play in that."
Lytton resident Jeff Chapman told the CBC he witnessed his parents die in the fire that engulfed the town.
With only minutes to react, the elderly couple sought shelter from the smoke and flames in a trench in their backyard, as Chapman ran for safety at nearby rail tracks.
From that vantage, he said he saw the fires sweep across and destroy most of the town.
His distressed voice could be heard pleading for help over the crackling flames in a video on CBC. The ground, he said, was too hot to go back for his parents.
Meanwhile, a heat wave that stretched at the beginning of the week from the US state of Oregon to Canada's Arctic territories has started moving eastward, late Thursday touching parts of Ontario in central Canada.
British Columbia also warned Friday of flooding from melting mountain snow caps and glaciers under the heat dome, which occurs when hot air is trapped by high pressure fronts, heating the ground.
On Friday, an offshore oil pipeline connected to Pemex's Ku-Maloob-Zaap offshore platform complex ruptured and caused a giant fire in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Bloomberg.
"Pemex said the gas leak occurred at 5:15am local time in the submarine pipeline near Ku-Maloob-Zaap's Ku-C satellite platform in the Campeche Sound causing a fire 150 meters from the platform, according to a statement from the company," said the report. "By 10:45am local time normal operating conditions were restored, and no injuries or evacuations were reported, it said."
Ultimately, Pemex was able to control the fire — but not before harrowing video and images of the oil burning on the surface of the ocean was captured by people on the scene and spread by commenters on social media.
The office of Brazil's attorney general said Friday it had opened a probe into claims that President Jair Bolsonaro knew about, but failed to report, alleged corruption in the purchase of a coronavirus vaccine.
"In a notice this Friday morning, the Attorney General's office informed the Federal Supreme Court of the opening of an investigation into events reported" by three senators, who have formally accused the president of malfeasance.
The preliminary probe will serve to determine whether to pursue charges against the president.
Last week, Brazil's senate heard accusations that a deal to purchase the Indian-made Covaxin vaccine was a front to embezzle millions of dollars, that a Bolsonaro ally masterminded the plan, and that the president knew all about it.
A health ministry official testified that his superiors had exerted "atypical, excessive" pressure on him to approve payment for the deal, which he suspected was over-billed.
The official and his brother Luis Miranda, a congressman close to Bolsonaro, said they took the matter to the president, but he took no action.
Following these allegations, three Brazilian senators on Monday formally accused Bolsonaro of malfeasance before the Supreme Court.
Attorney General Augusto Aras, whose job it is to decide whether to bring charges, is an ally of the president, as is his deputy Humberto Jacques de Medeiros.
Medeiros had asked the Supreme Court to reject the senators' request, but this was denied by judge Rosa Weber, who said the attorney general's office could not be "a spectator of the actions of the powers of the republic."
Madeiros was thus compelled to file a request to the Supreme Court for authorization to seek information on the case "and the eventual transfer of evidence" collected by other judicial and legislative bodies.
© 2021 AFP
Trump-loving Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro this week set the stage for a January 6th-style coup attempt in his country by saying that he would not step down from the presidency if he loses next year's election due to "voter fraud."
As Reuters reports, Bolsonaro said this week that he would "hand over the presidential sash to whoever wins the election cleanly" but "not with fraud."
The comments echo former President Donald Trump's refusal to commit to the peaceful transition of power last year, as well as his claims that he could only lose the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud.
Trump's attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election culminated with the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol building, where Trump supporters attempted to intimidate Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's victory.
Reuters notes that "in recent months, Bolsonaro has been touting a bill for printed ballots rather than Brazil's modern computer voting" and has warned ominously that "the people won't accept" an election they feel is tainted with fraud.
Polls suggest Bolsonaro is vulnerable and that, if the election were held today, he would lose badly to left-wing rival Luiz Inácio da Silva, who served as president of Brazil for eight years.
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