News stories by Fabiana Frayssinet, page 26

After 10 years of waiting for secure title to the land they occupy and farm, 35 families in Resende, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, have joined a huge march organised by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brasilia to demand effective agrarian reform.

The armed forces of Brazil will begin to search for the remains of guerrilla fighters who were forcibly disappeared in Araguaia, a remote area in the northern jungle state of Pará during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, reviving an old debate on the role played by the army in that area.

The government of the state of Sao Paulo in southern Brazil has launched the first hydrogen-fuelled bus in Latin America - the first step towards environmentally sustainable public transport of the future.

Brazil has long been committed to developing alternatives to fossil fuels to power its vehicle fleet, to the extent that 90 percent of new cars sold in the country are flex-fuel, running on ethanol or gasoline in any proportion. Now the government is embarking on another technological field: electric vehicles.

It’s another day marked by gunfire in the Morro da Providencia 'favela', one of the most dangerous slums in this Brazilian city, and the only area where people can move around in relative safety is in the lower part of the neighbourhood, towards the foot of the hill.

'Ialorixá' Gilda died of a massive heart attack in 1999 after members of a pentecostal church swarmed into her temple and hit her over the head with a Bible. Her death drew attention to the growing religious intolerance in Brazil, which was denounced this week at the United Nations.

The approval of draft laws and infrastructure projects that pose a threat to the environment in Brazil, promoted by large landowners and even sanctioned by some sectors in the government, has tied the hands of Environment Minister Carlos Minc and brought a replay of the tense climate that cost his predecessor her job.

Handed down from generation to generation, traditional knowledge about medicinal plants has reached state laboratories in Brazil through a programme that has already identified 71 native and exotic species for producing herbal medicines.

Environmentalists and human rights activists in Brazil are demanding clarification of the murder of Paulo Santos Souza, a fisherman and trade unionist who was fighting irregularities in the construction of a gas pipeline for Petrobras.

The police, who used to shoot first and ask questions later in Santa Marta, a Rio de Janeiro shantytown, are now getting on well with the local community – the result of a state government plan that nevertheless has drawn criticism.