Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s chief of staff resigned on Thursday over an ethics scandal that the opposition is trying to use to derail his candidate in next month’s presidential election.
Erenice Guerra, whose role as Cabinet chief is an influential post in the Lula government, had been under growing pressure in recent days to step down over allegations that she was involved in a kickback scheme for public works contracts.
Trailing badly in opinion polls, main opposition candidate Jose Serra has sought to link the scandal to ruling party contender Dilma Rousseff, who preceded Guerra as Lula’s chief of staff before hitting the campaign trail.
Rousseff remains on course to win a majority of votes in the first round of voting on Oct. 3 and become Brazil’s first woman president, despite the allegations that she condoned unethical conduct within her leftist Workers’ Party.
She has not been directly linked to any wrongdoing, which analysts say makes it unlikely the scandals will cut her lead.
“The chances that it forces a second round are still rather small. The opposition would have to be very skilled to exploit this incident,” said Amaury de Souza, a Rio de Janeiro-based political analyst.
“The corruption scandals so far didn’t change voter preference except among those with higher education or income. That is insufficient to change the odds,” de Souza said.
Rousseff has 51 percent of voter intention against 27 percent for Serra of the opposition PSDB party, according to a Datafolha poll released on Thursday.
The same poll last week showed Rousseff with 50 percent against Serra’s 27 percent.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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